Good morning friends! 

This is a fairly long column today, but please do try and read until the end! I have deliberately intended to keep the language fairly simple and easy to understand.

My story

Many years ago I suffered a terrible shoulder injury whilst boxing, which changed my life. My shoulder totally ripped out of the socket, and when I had it put back in place, I was never the same again. 

Months later I was still in pain, and when my shoulder ripped out again, I was told I needed to have a surgery to fix the problem. 

Despite being told it was a fairly minor surgery (keyhole) I actually needed a much more serious (open) surgery, where they cut the front of my body 4 inches open as well as putting metal screws in to the back of my arm.

At this point I was training to become an electrician, and whilst this is a good job in the UK - I had no passion for it. I was young, and was doing it simply as I did not know what else to do. Something many young people across the world still suffer from today.

After my surgery I couldn’t life my arm up above shoulder height for almost a year, and due to this, I could not work. This meant this meant that I lost my apprenticeship, and any chance of becoming an electrician in the future was now gone. 

I stopped living my life and got very depressed - ‘how can something like this happen to me? I’m only 16’ and ‘I’m so unlucky’ were the thoughts floating around in my head. 

A year later, I actually managed to injure my OTHER shoulder! This eventually lead to me having to have the same surgery on the other side meaning I was  now I was in no place to do sports at all. I changed my way of living so that I avoided anything which could aggravate my pain, and stayed in the house without seeing anyone.

We actually moved away from London in to a quiet part of England during this time and felt like I had no friends or anyone to turn to for help other than my girlfriend, but as she had to work all day I was seriously depressed and in a lot of mental and physical pain. 

After almost two years of this I decided enough was enough. I was going to fix my issues myself, as the physiotherapy I had on the national health service was not helping at all.

After researching for hours each day and taking extensive notes I managed to learn a lot of knowledge about the body and how to fix it, and began to put this in to practice on myself. I decided that I was fed up of feeling sorry for myself and that I would not only restore myself back to normal - but actually make myself able to do sports again and to a HIGHER level, like I had always dreamed of. 

Within 5 years I had dedicated myself to my studies and got many qualifications including becoming an Advanced Personal Trainer, Lower Back Pain Specialist, Sports Therapist, Pilates instructor, Yoga Teacher, English teacher, and more.

I focused on healing myself, which meant doing my rehab exercises EVERY day. I tied exercise bands to every door in my house, bought and installed a pull-up bar, and put weights and medicine balls in each room, so I had no excuse not to do my exercises throughout the day.

It worked and I got myself in to a good, liveable condition. I still have to do my exercises for my shoulders everyday now - 13 years after my first surgery, but it is a small price to pay to be out of pain and depression.

I have now ran my own fitness and rehabilitation businesses in the UK for over 8 years, and have worked with many athletes and ordinary people, to not only fix injuries they thought they were deemed to live with forever, but also to help get athletes  get back to playing their sports at a high level once they have suffered an injury. 

I love my work now and it is something I am truly passionate about. I feel much more like ‘me’ than I ever would, working on building sites as an electrician, and my soul is satisfied by this rewarding type of work. 

My two proudest moments are working with a boxer with a shoulder injury to win the title despite his pain, and also working with a young man who broke his neck in a car crash to rediscover sport, after being semi-paralysed and told he would never be able to do sport again. 

So the point I am getting at here, is that life is what you make of it. 

Do not ever believe you are destined to have any particular fate, just because your life seems to be heading in one direction.

You get to choose how your own story plays out. You just have to act upon it. 

The reason for this post is that I have been asked recently by a few students - ‘do I believe in fate?’. 

‘I don’t know’ is always my response to that question. But I don’t think it is important. What I do think is important is that we never let a belief in fate, stop us from achieving anything we want in life. 

‘The future is unwritten’

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I am a highly experienced professional English teacher, Yoga Instructor, Nutrition Consultant and Personal Trainer from London, UK. I recently left London to work and travel around Japan on a Working Holiday Visa with my girlfriend Ashley (who is also a teacher on Cafetalk : https://cafetalk.com/tutors/profile/?id=54542&lang=en ). We love sharing adventures travelling, teaching, exploring and understanding new cultures. We hope to speak with you soon!

Please check out my lessons if you are interested in learning real, authentic British English, or have an interest in Yoga, healthy eating or general health and fitness.

Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions, or if you would like to schedule a lesson at a time in which my schedule is not open. I will always do my best to accomodate every student.