The kid between the bellies is how I describe my childhood experience with domestic violence. That kid was me. Like so many children of DV, the abusive relationship between my parents didn't make me love one parent more than the other. I loved my mother and I hated all she endured. I loved my father just the same but hated the physical and psychological harm he inflicted on my mom. So as a 7-year-old referee trying to separate the two, all I usually saw was their bellies.

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Eventually, divorce and a fractured family path lead my mom, my little brother, and me from the dangerous, sweaty streets of the Alamo City in San Antonio, Texas to the sunsets, palm trees, and the Pacific Coast Highway of Los Angeles, California.

 

As a transplanted teenager, I found it easy to turn to drugs and alcohol. I was depressed and suffered terrible anxiety and crippling low self-esteem. Finding comfort in my addictions, I spent my time barely functioning and in total isolation. Later, I surrounded myself with people twice my age who sponsored those addictions because they thought I was a cool kid. I managed various addictions, school, a job, and even a one-bedroom apartment, just as I got ready to start high school. Cool kid, huh?

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High school for the arts came along and allowed for a creative outlet. All that weighed heavy on my spirit and had suffocated my person at an early age now had a way out - through my drawings and paintings. Art was my rehab. It was my saving grace.  But just months before my high school graduation, I became a father. According to my mother, my life was over. All my dreams of being a successful art student, and attending any art school in the world, were dead. I graduated, but the romantic notion of going off to a faraway land to sculpt and paint sat at the bottom of a diaper bag in the back of a stroller. I was now a teenage dad.

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In my early twenties, I hit rock bottom. I decided something had to change. No matter what it took I was going to transform my life. Somewhere deep down inside I knew I was here for much more. I felt no one ‘got it’; that no one really understood me. So I decided to start studying and find a way to help myself. It was time for me to go back to school. After a couple of years at East LA College, I transferred to UCLA where I double-majored in Fine Arts and English Literature. Reading was the key to those faraway places I always wanted to go to. Studying was my solace. I even began to write. From the day I made that change I haven’t looked back.

 

Over the last 3 decades, I’ve studied everyone from Eckhart Tolle to John C. Maxwell. I also had the amazing opportunity to work with the incredible Jim Rohn. My personal Life Coach was Joseph McClendon III. He has since developed and expanded his courses to try and help as many people as possible, but I am so grateful for my experience with Coach. These people changed my life and instilled something in me that I could have never imagined. It was because of them, that I knew I wanted to be a Life Coach one day. I have since traveled some of this world after all, I have seen this beautiful country, and I’ve come to love my California that welcomed us and took care of me throughout this remarkable journey. No matter where I've traveled, I have come across people desperate for advice and guidance just as I had years before. So often, they have turned to me for that guidance. Having been there myself, I found it easy to identify with the battles they were fighting. As more and more people approached me, it became evident my coaching practice had to be set up.

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These days I grab life with both hands and believe strongly that anything is possible. I believe that we can do or be or have anything we want once we truly manage our minds. I am grateful for every lesson, and now I get to give back. I am grateful for that little girl who was born my senior year in high school, and all of her successes. I am grateful for her 5 brothers who followed, each with their own unique and spectacular success. I have more of an eye-level exchange with my parents and I am very grateful to still have a loving dialogue with each of them today. I am blessed with the opportunity to continuously work on my physical, mental, and emotional health. And I am truly a fortunate man to explore this path that leads me to people with similar visions, dreams, and the burning desire to get there.

 

I became certified as a Transformational Life Coach at the Brave Thinking Institute. I am an advocate and genuine student of the works of Napolean Hill, Bob Proctor and Roxy Nafousi, and so many extraordinary people. As important as this formal qualification is to me, it is my life experience and intuition, together with the fact that I sincerely and deeply care about people, that will always be the key to my success. I help people help themselves. I don't have all the answers. You do.

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Jim Rohn used to start off every workshop with, "So if you're ready, say, 'I'm ready' ". It was then I knew a magical journey was about to begin. So if you're ready, tell yourself you're ready. Then reach out - and I'll go there with you.