WHO AM I
MY STORY
My curiosity and range have been my best friends as well as my worst enemies.
It was my range that later turned out to be my biggest weapon against my toughest opponent, me. I’m a seeker of understanding and clarity at all costs. When things are clear, I can withstand any pain. As a survivor of extreme anxiety and depression I know first hand what can keep a person stuck in a self fulfilling prophecy of defeat.
We know much more than we think we know.
My life is a true testament of how the “worst” things about your life can turn out to be the very foundation and cause of your best life.
I rode the wave of failure for decades and it plagued my soul every day and night until one day the very same wave became something beautiful without anything outside of me changing. That’s when I knew that what is dark is actually more than just dark. I watched darkness become the canvas that gives light existence.
“Life for me has always been a series of survival tactics.”
After high school I attempted to become an engineer and it didn’t work out. As much as my heart would have loved to have become an engineer, my spirit was very far from that life. I was an artist and designer at heart and I knew this but I had no courage nor articulation to insist on it. So I naturally entered into the entertainment industry while studying.
After dropping out of formal education and facing that humiliation I attempted to make things happen in the entertainment industry. I tried many things, like radio, club DJ’ing, television and film. I was also a consumer of entertainment, I attended open mics, slam poetry sessions, rap battles, dance contests and many more. I felt at home whenever I was somewhere where people were expressing or creating.
When I left the country for the first time my companion was the industry. Entertainment is the same everywhere. Art is a universal language. I could DJ anywhere.
I struggled with anxiety and a fear of people a lot but I somehow found ways around it, and some of those ways were not good at all.
After many years of getting nowhere I crashed emotionally and alcohol became my friend until one day I had a serious drunken driving episode that changed everything. It was at that moment that I knew I was definitely going to die soon if I didn’t drastically change my life.
It was the first time in my life I actually wanted to go to church. I was living in a Muslim country at the time, so I came back home and eventually found a Church. I was so desperate for change I took Church very seriously. A few weeks later I was baptized and a few months more I was working full time at the church. I became a youth leader and suddenly my entertainment industry experience and subsequent failure was turning into something of value. I was able to make Church fun for young people. The success of youth nights was deeply healing for me
I expanded beyond Church walls and into schools and communities and eventually arrived at juvenile centers in prisons.
It was in prisons where my heart was truly captured. I had a completely wrong idea of the people that were behind bars. I saw myself in so many of them. I saw many other people that were dear to me in their eyes. I was given an opportunity to be full time in prison ministry and I took it. Thus began many years of a whole new world of gangs, violence, crime and many other colourful things. I also experienced the truth of the human spirit and where God really is.
Working in all those prisons (11 in total) showed me another side of humanity. I was exposed to the very worst things about humans as well as the very best.
For me to be locked up in a room with 40 guys in maximum security for three hours while trying to teach and entertain them surely changed my life drastically. I was so afraid of people in general during that time and there I was facing the ones I was most afraid of. But I was desperate to become brave. I discovered that the most dangerous people are actually the most vulnerable. I saw the silent cry of the soul behind every bully and cruel person. I had always thought that bad guys were tough guys.
I also got a chance to speak to many family members of inmates and visited many substance recovery homes. This painted a very clear picture of what makes people end up in prison. In fact it also showed me how easy it is to become a criminal. Some people’s upbringing almost guarantees them to become criminals. It takes hard work for some people to remain good citizens in society because of what faces them daily. I learned how to not judge and most importantly to forgive. My whole life I had struggled to forgive certain people and now being exposed to the real human stories behind the murders and crimes I was able to be rational about my own heart.
I discovered a new passion in teaching while there. I became a big brother, friend and mentor. I learnt to really listen and to read body language. It was a beautiful process of becoming for me. I thought I was there to care, teach and guide but ended up being taught, healed and molded into a man.
“Even my own darkness was exposed through those stories. I hadn’t fully understood the extent of my anger and pain until I also started sharing my story in prison.”
Through a series of unbelievable events I ended up becoming a missionary.
"Human beings are the most powerful things I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing and the more I realize that power in people, the more powerful I feel also. "
At that time in my life, on paper, according to the world I grew up in, I was a failure.
I still hadn’t achieved anything recognizable to the world. I had no savings, no home, no car, no grand plan B, just coasting along and being alive. I was like a ghost that was wandering the globe and had family and friends who didn’t know where I was most of the time.
I would go for months without the internet, TV was years and most times I didn’t even have a phone that was working. I could go a whole year without world news. And everytime I watched anything it felt like nothing had changed. I lived in a bubble and was experiencing all kinds of things. One day I’d be in a mansion and the next in a mud hut. We humans are more adaptable than we think, by far. My own body and mind surprised me many times. Some of the things we call our weaknesses are actually our superpowers. My fear of everything is what drove me to try everything once I accepted that I was a chicken. There’s something powerful about acceptance because it puts a thing to rest, and once you put that thing down and free your hands, you can annihilate it.
So I decided to come home and just be a normal person again
I got offered a job in the Middle East. I really didn’t want jobs anymore but this one was at least more like part of what I had been doing so far except I was now going to be paid well for it. I had lived in the Middle East before this for 7 years during my entertainment industry days, but now was going back for something a little different.
I worked as a wellness coach to some very wealthy people who had influence in all sectors. My job was to listen to their emotional and physical problems and then design a life for them. This work gave me access to so many events, homes, big boats, hotels and many more experiences of a lifetime, but it all overwhelmed me.
The old me who worked in entertainment would have loved it, but I had changed so much. This wasn’t the way I wanted to make money anymore. I made a vow to never again work for money. I believe in working for the sake of doing great work and letting the money follow my work. Money to me is value, if I value what I’m doing, I will get that amount of value back in money. A small job treated like a million bucks will produce a million bucks eventually.
So currently I’m working alongside my life story and using it to help people shift their perspective of personal strength and self worth. There’s so much more to our fears than just something to conquer or avoid. Our fears are our calling. A calling to allow what’s emerging in us to fully meet what’s in front of us. It’s very possible to see the hidden gems in your everyday life, especially in areas you think there are none. It’s not the issues at hand that are an issue, it’s not knowing what they actually mean that drives us crazy.
Human beings are the most powerful things I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing and the more I realize that power in people the more powerful I feel also.
My mission is to understand more about the source of our power… and to exchange ideas with people.