Meet Fil

PERSONAL PERFORMANCE COACH and PUBLISHED AUTHOR

I’m Fil, and here’s my story.

We won’t start at the very beginning, as my childhood was pretty average. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for all of it, and consider myself lucky to grow up in a safe place with a supportive mother, and good friends. But let’s fast forward a bit.

At the age of 14, my brother gave me some advice that would put me on a path for the next few years. He said, “Fil, if you want to do well in life, choose what you’re going to do early, begin working on it, and get a head start.” I took this advice to heart and began thinking about what I wanted to be when I was older.

At that stage of life, I was aspirational, but still very much realistic. I wanted to find a job that was respectable, paid well, and that I would enjoy. I like helping people learn, so becoming a teacher was the obvious choice. What made this choice even better was that there was a clear path for me to take to make it happen. Complete, my studies, go to college, then university, qualify, and get the job. Simple.

So that’s what I did. I spent the next 7 years doing what I needed to. Passed my exams, got the grades, jumped through the hoops, and ticked the boxes. I was almost there. Then everything changed in my final year of university. 

If this was a time travel movie, this part would be where the future me comes back to in order to change something. The path I had been on had been so straightforward, but that was about to change.

After my final school placement, I had little else to do during the last few months of the academic year. I had completed my dissertation, most of my coursework was done, and I only had a few more lectures to attend. They say your life can change in a single moment. If that’s true, then this is the moment for me.

I was sitting on a bench on campus, just relaxing waiting for some friends to come out of class when I saw one of my senior lecturers in the distance. Im not sure why, but I started thinking about the journey I had been on, where it was going, and where I might end up.

Now if society continues the way it has, then my generation is likely going to be working till we’re 75, maybe more. I imagined becoming a teacher and teaching for the next 50 years. Then it hit me. I don’t know what it was, but something inside me wasn’t right. It was like I had just swallowed a heavy pill that was now blocking my insides and pulling my stomach down. I felt sick. Not in a vomit kind of way, but just did not feel good about this future.

The blinders I had been wearing for the last 7 years had come off. I could now question the potential of doing something different. Even though I had put in all the work, and was nearly finished, I now knew I didn’t want to teach. 

With that, a life lesson was learned. Observe your own life, and stay aware of where you’re going and why. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the perceived future I had that made me change my mind. I had already had some ‘less than ideal’ experiences whilst teaching that put me off. But this feeling was the wake-up slap that allowed me to see my truth.

So now what? I was about to graduate, but I didn’t want to do the thing I was qualifying in. I had considered the idea of traveling, as many of my friends had, and recommended it. But I wasn’t a fan of backpacking and slumming in hostels (at the time). But I did like the idea of traveling to learn.

With my sporting background, the idea of learning something practical appealed to me, especially in the area of self-defense as it was something I had never done. So I did some research and found various places around the world where I could learn combat-related skills. There was Boxing in Rio De Janeiro, Stick & Knife fighting in the Philippines, and then I found it. Kung Fu in China!

Growing up, I was a big fan of Power Rangers, and very much enjoyed the Karate Kid films. It was an easy choice for me. I spent a year working in my local supermarket to save up the money to go. This also gave me time to get into shape, as the head of the school very much emphasized that classes were not going to be easy, and I needed to be ready.

I had been to gyms before and was fairly fit from playing many sports throughout school and university. However, I knew I could improve. I found a training program, began being mindful of what I eat, and got into the best shape I had ever been.

During this process, I came across a lot of inspiring and motivating fitness experts. I began watching hype videos and following ‘fit-speration’ on social media. I then came across the works of Les Brown. He’s a fantastic motivational speaker who promotes the idea that you can live your dream. I heard his message, and I felt it. 

I began to question what my dream is. I had always thought it was to become a teacher, but that didn’t seem right. That may have been an ambition, but I wouldn’t say it was a dream. For years I had said that if I won the lottery or if money was no object, then I would be a Life Coach. I wasn’t 100% what a Life Coach was, but in my head, it meant that I help people make their lives better.

I reflected back on my childhood to try and remember what kind of things I used to dream about. 

By happenstance, whilst having this topic on my mind, I was clearing out some old stuff from my mum’s house, and I found a project I completed back when I was 9 years old. It was a small folder of writings with different headings such as “What do I believe in” and “What do I think happens when we die.” - In hindsight, I think my school was a bit more forward-thinking than most - Then there was a heading that said, “What do I want to do with my life”. There was a list of your typical childhood fantasies; I want to drive a fast car, I want to be an astronaut, and so on. Then at the bottom in a huge bold font said the words:

“I WANT TO SAVE THE WORLD”.

At first, I chuckled at my naivety. These were just the idealistic words of a child. But for many hours later, one question continued to bounce around my mind. What changed? I sat with this question for a while. I thought ‘What if it didn’t?’. Maybe I had just forgotten. So what would that look like now, as an adult? What does it mean to save the world? Save it from what?

I was reminded of the phrase “Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime.” I applied this to my ‘save the world’ puzzle. Perhaps I could teach people how to improve themselves, and in turn, improve their lives. Then maybe, just maybe, I could help save the world in my own little way.

As separate as these experiences may have seemed, they were all about to collide when I sat down and did an exercise (which I now use with clients, even now). In the pursuit of trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down the jobs that I had in enjoyed in the past. These were teaching, personal training, and working in a supermarket. 

Under each vocation, I question why I enjoyed them. What was it about the job that was enjoyable? I continued to break these reasons down, constantly asking ‘why’ like an annoying 3-year-old. I was surprised to find that even though the three jobs seemed very different on the surface, they eventually all came down to the same conclusion. I enjoy helping people improve.

As a teacher, I was helping students improve their knowledge and ability. As a personal trainer, I helped clients improve their health and fitness. Then in the supermarket, I enjoyed helping new people improve at the job, as well as improving the processes of the work. It was all clear now.

Everything that had happened so far suddenly linked together. I knew I wanted to help people improve. Teaching people to improve themselves (like the man fishing) would help them improve for a lifetime. This could help them ‘save’ their own personal experience of the world. This all brought me back to my childhood lottery dream of being a Life Coach. Les says I can do it. I can live my dream. With a newfound sense of clarity, I shrugged my shoulders and thought “Yeah, why not. Let’s do it.”

Then it was time to head to East China to study Kung Fu. I packed my suitcase, which ended up being 50% books. I took 12 books with me (one for each month). I wasn’t sure what to study to become a Life Coach, so it was a mixture of Psychology, Philosophy, and Personal Coaching guides. 

What followed was a year of intense exercise, meeting great people from all around the world, and pushing myself beyond my limits both physically and emotionally. The stories I could tell from this time could make a book in and of themselves (and maybe one day they will).

I read all the books I took with me. This was a very big deal to me, as I had never been a big reader. In high school, we had to bring a book in to read every morning. I bought a murder mystery book because I thought it would be entertaining. Some days I would read, others my eyes would just glaze over and I would pretend I was reading. Each term I would start the book again so that it looked like I had a new book, and to this day I still don’t know who the murderer was.

I just wasn’t a fan of reading. I found it boring, and most of the time it made me sleepy. That wasn’t the case In China. I read every book for hours at a time. By the end of the year, I had read more books in those 12 months than in my whole life before. This showed me that it wasn’t so much how I was consuming knowledge that mattered, but what I was consuming that made a difference.

Returning back to the UK was a little underwhelming. I returned straight to work as I was fortunate that the company held a position for me. I quickly settled back into old routines, doing what I did before the trip. One day I found myself tidying at work, and I just stopped. I looked around me, and in a way, at myself. There I was having had this incredible life-changing experience, but now I was here, and it all seemed the same.

Not everything was the same though. Since returning, I had many people asking me about my experience. More specifically, many people would ask how I could just drop everything I had at home to move to a place I had never been, with a language I don’t speak, to do something I had never done before. These conversations would inspire people to talk about things they have always wanted to do.

With what I had studied and practiced, I naturally began coaching friends and family to help them pursue their own dreams. This went on for a couple of months as I continued to learn and grow in the area. Then I receive a phone call. It’s from a friend of a friend. They have been told I’m doing Life Coaching, and they are interested in my service. It all sounds very formal. I agreed to work with them as I was happy to be helping people, to which they responded “How much do you charge?”. This caught me off guard as before now, I had been coaching friends for free. I took a deep breath, chucked out a number that I thought was reasonable, and they said “Great, when can I book in.” This was my first paying client.

Now that I was coaching ‘officially’ - which still felt very odd - I wanted to learn more about the business side of things. I figured what better way than from coaches who are already doing it? I found a networking event for coaches that was happening in London. There were many different kinds of people there, all with their own styles and specialties. It was intimidating at first but the overall atmosphere with this crowd was warm and welcoming. I made a few contacts and exchanged details.

One particular coach was very interested in my approach to helping people change their lives through personal transformation. This was different from what other coaches were doing as usually people were focused on a certain area of life such as business, money, or health. After telling them my story and the work I had done so far, they told me that they had a few clients on their waiting list that they think would be better suited to work with me, and could he refer them to me? I happily agreed and passed along my contact details.

Those people then contacted me and they all booked sessions! I couldn’t believe it. What was more unbelievable was that they all went on to refer friends and associates. This Is how my coaching business would begin.

At this point I still wasn’t ‘officially’ qualified as a coach - To be honest, I didn’t even know that was a thing. I was fortunate to be invited out to Canada to take part in a course where several experts from various industries came together to help students approach problem-solving from different angles. I was brought in by a previous client to be the ‘Philosophy Approach’. 

It was an interesting experience, and despite being one of the staff, I learned a great deal about perspective and thinking outside the box. I was surrounded by doctors, veterans, masters, and experts in very competitive fields. To say I felt out of place would be a drastic understatement. But I did my best and the course was a great success.

However, when meeting the other members of staff and sharing our backgrounds, the question that kept going up was “Where did you qualify?” My simple answer was “I’m not”. This didn’t bother me at the time, as I knew I was helping people and getting great results. The question stuck with me though, long after I had returned home. So I looked into getting qualified. Not because I felt I needed to be, but because I believed there was more for me to learn and this would only improve my ability to help.

I took a Personal Performance Coaching course, along with becoming an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic-Programming) Practitioner. They were both very informative and helped me to learn a lot about how people think, and how goal orientation can be structured best to get results further and faster. I brought these learnings into my business with great success.

Since then I have continued to learn and improve my methods whilst working with clients and mentors in different areas. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was forced to take a lot of my work online, which took some getting used to, as previously I had done my work on a face-to-face basis. Now using the lessons I have learned and the breakthroughs I have experienced (both personally and professionally), I want to help even more people.

The internet has given us a great opportunity to access a wealth of information and connect more people than ever before. I created this website to do just that. Share information that can help people develop themselves, improve their lives, and live the life they’ve always wanted. Some may call me an idealist, but I say once your ideals become your reality, then being an idealist makes you a realist. That’s what we’re here to do. Take those ideals, those dreams, those goals, bring them all to life, and make them a reality. Let’s go!