I’ve never felt normal. I always felt different.
As a young kid, all the way up until my early 20s when I eventually dove into self awareness & self development.
Everything started to finally make sense for me then.
I first did the Myers Briggs personality test, and saw that I was an INFJ, one of the rarest of the personality types (roughly 2% of the world. Nicknamed “the Advocate” or “the “Counsellor”).
The type most prone to feeling misunderstood and different. Ok so I’m not alone! Something I wish I had known sooner.
Reading this and so much more was very insightful to me at the time. I felt like someone was describing me better than I could have explained it myself. I finally felt heard. I finally felt seen.
The line of “advocates are troubled by injustice” really hit home too. One of my earliest memories was crying to my mam when I found out Jesus died for me when I was around 4!
My life was like a jigsaw puzzle that didn’t make sense, but now pieces were finally starting to come together.
Years later when I finally did the Mental Freedom work (LINK), I got the bird eye view of the puzzle, and my whole life finally made sense. It changed my life forever.
For those who feel called, click that link and read about how you can do the same.
People wondered how I could leave my safe, pensionable, well paid job in Facebook to follow my passion & purpose of becoming a coach. To go on my mission to help people regain their physical freedom.
But they didn’t understand it literally wasn’t a choice for me, it was a moral obligation at that point in my life.
I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise. I had to fight for what I believed in. That’s the only avenue that would let me live with no regrets.
Humans all run from fear, but we have different ones.
Most run from the fear of no money, safety or status. My biggest fear was not living true to myself.
This is actually the biggest recorded regret of humanity on their deathbeds. I just realised this earlier in life from giving up on my soccer career and living with that pain & regret.
I promised myself when the next passion rolled around, I would go all in. And I did.
But how did I find my passion and purpose in helping people overcome chronic pain & injury specifically?
I thought I would be a soccer player so I had never planned for anything else. Never envisioned myself being anything else.
And from being a shy, introverted, embarassed kid, the last thing I thought I would be doing is becoming a coach and sharing my life to try & inspire others!
I even remember an old friend from school seeing my IG page recently and being like wtf?! He said he never thought I’d be doing this. I replied me and you both! It’s funny how life goes.
But from looking back and doing deep dive reflections on my path, I have a blueprint to follow for those like the younger me.
Those who are unhappy with their life.
Those who know they are heading for regrets on their deathbed.
Those who don’t want to settle any longer.
Those who want more passion & purpose in their life.
The Blind Leading the Blind
If you are someone who has a deep sense that you need to follow your passion & purpose, you probably struggle to know what that is.
That was me too. Why?
Because we follow the path of those who aren’t optimising for passion & purpose.
The mainstream societal path ultimately optimises for safety:
- Go to school
- Go to college
- Get a well paid career. A safe pensionable job
- Get married & a mortgage
- Retire at 65
And only then can you follow your passions and whats true to you. It’s unrealistic & dangerous to think otherwise.
That it the underlying belief of mainstream society.
So don’t be surprised anymore if you follow that route and aren’t filled with passion & purpose. It’s not optimising for that.
You are probably safe, so it served its purpose.
To me it’s backwards. I wanted to optimise for integrity & finding my passion & purpose.
So to imagine that I would postpone it all until I’m 65 years old, and waste the best years of my life for safety?! Nah fuck that. Not for me thanks.
I personally don’t agree with the retirement model as a way to live my life, and it wasn’t the path I was going to follow.
I will write a separate newsletter about how to build cast iron commitment. In your vision. In yourself.
But for this newsletter, we will stick with how I actually found my passion & purpose.
I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I was stumbling forward as best I could.
But in hindsight, there are a few key things I would tell my younger self to give him clarity & accelerate his journey.
You Don’t ‘Find’ Passion & Purpose, You Cultivate It
Read that 5 times and etch it into your brain.
As this is the first roadblock that stops most people. One I struggled with for a long time too.
You don’t ‘find’ your passion & purpose, you cultivate it.
Are you seeing the same trends yet? The same issues holding people back in most of life’s big problems?
- Chronic pains and injuries
- Not living a life true to themselves (don’t know their passion/purpose)
- Can’t find their ‘one true love’
They all are linked with the same foundation of illusion. The idea that you will just ‘find’ it. That there is a quick fix out there waiting for you.
The illusion that will keep you chasing your tail and never find the answer.
You don’t just find these things one day. Constantly searching for it is actually part of what creates separation from it.
Understand that there is no end, only evolution.
You look for the safety of the comfort zone. If I just find my passion, my partner, my fix for my chronic pains, then everything will be ok. But it’s an illusion.
– A relationship is a lifelong process that evolves & changes over time
– Your passion is a lifelong process that evolves & changes over time
– Looking after your body is a lifelong process that evolves & changes over time
You are focused on these imaginary goalposts that don’t even exist. A mirage of the mind.
The reality is that you cultivate passion & purpose over time:
- You don’t ‘FIND’ your passion/purpose like a toy in a cereal box one day.
- The FIX to your chronic pains & injuries doesn’t arrive one night like a deliveroo
- The juliet to your romeo isn’t just out there waiting for you
The flaw here is that we are conditioned by society to believe that the the answer is outside of oursevles. That it is outside of our control.
This is not true and massively disempowering.
It’s the path to an unhappy life, constantly waiting for something that is never going to arrive.
- There is no ‘fix’ for chronic pains and injuries, you need to follow the process of education & coaching & priotising your body over time
- There is no one ‘perfect partner’ out there for you. There are many potential matches based on your template installed in your as a child of what love is to you. Every person that you end up in a relationship with ARE your ‘soulmate’. But just some are not your preference
- There is no one passion & purpose out there for you to find. You cultivate passion & purpose over time by understanding more about yourself and the impact you want to have on the world. And this passion/purpose will evolve and change over time as you grow & learn more about yourself
Drop the illusion that everything is outside of yourself.
That you need saving, that you need to find X,Y,Z to be happy.
There is no light at the end of that tunnel.
Now that we have faced the harsh truth, the path for true progress has opened up.
If you want to understand something, you need to define it.
The first step to finding your passion is actually understand what the word passion means. It’s origin in this world.
And you’ll see how it’s nothing like this esoteric illusion we are sold in the mainstream.
1) Passion = Suffering
Passion comes from the latin word “passio”, which means suffering.
To have ‘passion’ for something, actually means that you are willing to suffer for it.
Oh how much sense this made to me once I learned this in a book called ‘The Passion Paradox’.
It originates all the way back from “the passion of the christ”. Jesus had ‘passion’ for us because he was willing to suffer for us.
He put it all on the line. He didn’t just metaphorically ‘die on the hill’ for what he believed in, he physically did.
That is what passion is: your willingness to suffer for what you believe in.
Passion isn’t:
- something you do when things are good
- something fun that you drop when things get hard.
- something you find this year and throw away next year
Passion is something you care enough about that you are willing to suffer for it through the ups and downs. Passion is something you stay committed to.
Not what you thought was it eh?
Not the fluffy, warm, view of your yacht in the harbour beside your mansion that you get once you ‘find your passion’.
This is the origin of passion, but the romanticism period changed its meaning. It was Shakespeare who first used the word ‘passion’ in terms of romance, and it took off from there and evolved into this distorted view we have today.
Disney movies for example showing us how the one will sweep us off our feet. The knight in shining armour will save the day. How our dream job is out there waiting for us.
It’s the quick fix hack we are all drawn to in any area of life. The illusion humans can’t resist.
It’s the idea that we can get the results without doing the work, which is most people’s dream.
But that’s not reality. The sooner you wake up to this the better. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
I realised why I had been successful to some degree when I was reading this book. I was so ‘passionate’ about getting people their physical freedom back, because I was willing to die on that hill.
I left my safe, pensionable Facebook job saving 2k a month for this. I was willing to, and have, put it all on the line to make it happen.
I am willing to suffer for it. Just like Jesus on the cross. This is my cross to bear. We each have our own.
I will write a newsletter on ‘how to turn your passion to your career’, as you need to do in with a smart strategy.
Or else you will more than likely be in the 95% percent who are out of business in the first 3 years, and crawl back to the 9-5 with your tail between your legs.
By the end of this year I’ll be 5 years in business. And we are just getting started.
2) Try More Shit
I followed Gary Vee for years when I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.
I found him very inspiring as he’s all about following what’s true to yourself over the normal college & 9-5 route.
That was resonating with me as I felt lost at 23 when I had just finished college and returned home from a J1:
- With a broken body from chronic pain & injury
- Hiding behind a mask not being my true self
- In 4k of debt and no progress in any area of life I wanted
- No clue of my passion/purpose after failing as a soccer player
I came across his video where a college graduate was asking him “how do I find my passion?”.
Gary: what have you tried?
College kid: ehh…..my college course (accounting we’ll say)
Gary: and do you like it?
College kid: no
Gary: okkkkk……so what else have you tried?
College kid: ……….ehh……nothing really?….
Gary: so you have tried ONE THING….and didn’t like it…….and you are here crying to me that you haven’t found your passion??
College kid:……ehh yeah I guess (realising how ridiculous and entitled that sounds)
Gary: TRY MORE SHIT. You need to get out there and try more things!! You have tried literally one thing and didn’t like it……how are you meant to know what you like if you don’t try other things?! you’re fricken 22 years old!! you are SO YOUNG. You could spend the next 8 years trying other things and you are still only 30. You have another 30/40 years to work. If you keep trying until 40, you still have another 20/30. YOU GOT TIME.
College kid: ….yeah cool thanks man. (completely uplifted)
That hit me like a right hook.
I was like holy shit, I have literally tried 2 or 3 things, and I’m sitting here like that kid being like ”I can’t find my passion”.
Gary Vee gave me the reality check I needed. The harsh truth that snapped me out of the society induced entitlement.
Thinking it will land on my lap like everything does these days with instant gratification.
I needed to try more shit.
If you have not found something you are passionate and willing to suffer for yet, you need to:
- Try more shit
- Do more of what you like
- Do less of what you don’t
By following this very simple advice, it will close the doors to things you realise you don’t want to do anymore, and open ones to things you want to try.
That was Garys advice, so that’s what I did. I followed the results to see where it would take me.
Through this strategy, you will find over time that you will start to identify the sparks.
3) Follow The Sparks
One of the things I decided to try with my new approach was Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
I had done 3 mixed martial arts classes in college. I remember thinking that I didn’t really like the boxing, but the stuff on the ground was pretty cool and fun.
With college life and drinking as the priority back then, I never went back after the 3 classes.
But through analysing the ‘shit’ I had tried in my life, I could see that Jiu-Jitsu was a small spark for sure. Cool, lets try it again and see if that spark turns into a flame or if it dies out.
I looked up some Jiu Jitsu gyms in Dublin and went into a few asking for information. A friend happened to be going to one near where I lived so I ended up joining there. (Brazier Jiu-Jitsu)
Within a few months I knew I would do this for life. That spark had turned into a passion.
I was willing to suffer on the mats to learn the skills physically & mentally that were improving my life.
Over 5 years later, I’m a purple belt in the same gym. I will do Jiu Jitsu for life. And I am in the process of helping with the coaching in the club.
What else had I a spark for? The human body.
There is a gap in the ‘starting Jiu-Jitsu again’ story to the purple belt. I had so much chronic pain during and after class that I had to stop. I took a full year out as a white belt to try and sort these issues.
It got so bad that I had to stop Jiu-Jitsu & the gym. Depressing as I had just found something I finally had passion for again after soccer, but now my body wasn’t capable of doing it.
At 25, it looked like my athletic pursuits could be over. For someone who has been an athlete all of my life up to that point, I just couldn’t comprehend this fate.
I couldn’t settle for that life. I’m afraid of the man I would become.
This was the origin of my physical freedom journey and the guywhodidntsettle story. (watch the documentary here).
I had 2 choices:
- I could either become obsessed with the body and figure out a way back
- Stay retired forever & filled with regret for the rest of my life
After having the pain of giving up on my soccer career in recent memory, and the thoughts of my life not involving sports & activities I love, the biggest passion of my life started.
This was it, the first time in my life that I committed to not settling.
The first time in my life as a man that I finally planted my flag and committed to it at all costs. No matter the obstacles, no matter the outcome.
All the experts & odds are against me, but IDGAF. I will get mobile or die tryin’.
And since you know what passion is now (willing to suffer for something), I couldn’t have been more passionate.
I still remember the moment where learning about the human body went from a necessary passion for me, to a passion I might pursue outside of myself to help others.
I was in my sitting room at home googling things on the body & mobility. One led to the next, and to the next. I was there for hours. I couldn’t tell you how long.
Time disappeared. It went into the night. I felt so in the moment, captivated by every word I was reading. It’s only when I came out of this flow zone, that I knew the body is another passion of mine.
Now you can see how ‘trying more shit’and ‘following the sparks’ led me to some passions.
Two of the many sparks I followed, had started to turn into small flames: Jiu-Jitsu & mobility training.
Through this process, I ended up with a final spark: evolutionary biology.
I read a book called ‘The Story of the Human Body” by Daniel Lieberman.
That book blew my mind and changed my life.
I had never looked at the human body or our species in the same way since. Information from this books underpins one of the education modules in the Physical Freedom Program (LINK)
It’s documents how the body evolved over 6 millions years of evolution to where we are today. How most of the biggest issues in the world today are ‘mismatch diseases’, aka us humans living in a modern environment we are not adapted to live in at all.
Cardiovascular diseases (the biggest killer in the world), chronic back pain (the biggest chronic pain in the world), anxiety/depression. All these things were man-made. They never existed in the hunter-gatherer days.
I could see the whole bigger picture of why I was in chronic pain and the route out. I could see why so many things were happening and the way out for all of them. That book changed the trajectory of my life.
Now we had a 3rd passion: Evolutionary biology/psychology.
So my 3 sparks turned to flames over time were:
1) Jiu-Jitsu
2) Mobility training
3) Evolutionary biology/psychology
I remember thinking “yeah thats great and all, but how do I make money off this?! How do I make this my career?! It’s just random shit.
But in Gary Vee’s video, he had already addressed this point. He said you don’t worry about this starting off, as it will subconsciouly force you down avenues you think you have to go down to make money. Even thought it may not actually be a passion.
So I took that advice and tried to drop any expectation and plan around where this would lead.
I was working in my 9-5, I had my ‘early retirement extreme’ plan to retire at 40ish, and in the meantime I was cultivating my passions.
I’m not where I want to be, but I’m ok.
I finally took ownership of my life and was doing something about it. I was moving in the right direction. I was at peace.
And then one day what happens?
I’m on instagram and I come accross a new profile – Dewey Nielsen. I still remember the moment. I opened up his profile, and what do I see?
- His last post was the book: The Story of the Human Body
- He is a Jiu-Jitsu black belt
- He is a Mobility Coach
I’m getting shivers now remembering that feeling.
….”wait a fucking minute….this guy is doing all the 3 things I am passionate about! But what’s his job?! What’s his 9-5?!”
I scanned his whole page. Googled him. Looked him up. Did the research.
He had no 9-5.
This is what he does.
This IS his career.
This is his life.
If he’s doing it, why can’t I?!
And that’s what you should be thinking when you look at my life.
You can take a ‘why me’ or a ‘try me’ attitude in these situations.
And I was all try me after settling for so long beforehand.
That was all the proof I needed. All the random dots on this new journey of ‘trying new shit’ and ‘following the sparks’ were aligning.
It’s important to realise here that you can only see the obvious pattern when you look back on it.
Moving forward is like walking through fog. It will only be clear in hindsight the dots have aligned.
As Kierkegaard said: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
So what did I do? I backed up my aspirations with my actions.
I signed up to the mobility course that Dewey is a course instructor on, and I went off to Liverpool by myself to it.
I was the only one in the room who wasn’t a coach but I didn’t give a shit. You gotta start somewhere.
I had passion to burn for this now. I got time. I’ll learn as I go.
The starting points don’t matter, it’s your attitude & approach that determines your progress.
Jesus nearly 6 years ago now. Here’s me and Dewey below. He’s the one of the left who looks like a model for Calvin Klein.
Another life changing moment happened at that seminar. On the first day we were all standing around and I saw f**king Kswiss 15 feet from me.
Holy shit.
I had just followed him a few months ago on Instagram and was absolutely amazed by what he could do with his body.
He was like 6”3, 100kg plus, an animal, and he was doing the front & middle splits. Doing crazy shit with his body.
What an inspiration he was to me. I was just coming out of the chronic pains and injuries, but was weak and skinny, and wanted to be like Kevin.
I’m naturally pretty introverted, but I forced myself to go over.
You might not get this chance again Mark! I went over like a fan at a Justin Bieber concert probably. But to my surprise, he was very friendly & accommodating.
He was chatting to me for a while and let me be in his group for the course over the weekend.
A successful mobility coach, a big name in France who has coached elite famous soccer players, tennis players, and he’s here talking to a skinny recruiter from Dublin who says he wants to be a coach!
I was like a pig in shit.
He gave me all the time in the world. If you wonder why I give out so much free info and try to help everyone I can – its because I’ve been helped by so many people along the way selflessly.
They went out of their way to help me succeed even thought they didn’t know me or owe me anything, and I want to do the same for you
(you aren’t a success unless you are making others a success – a wise coachpig once told me. Another man who reached out randomly to support me on my journey, and now we are good friends!)
I still remember at one point Kevin telling me he knows I will be a great coach. That he can see the passion in me and I will kill it. He said I would be one of the best coaches.
I was so embarrassed that someone like him would say that to me. Embarrassed but honored.
If you follow Kswiss you know he’s all about team no bullshit. He says it as it is, for mobility and life. And I knew he meant what he said. He truly thought I will be a great coach.
It’s like Ronaldo coming down to your local 5 -a-side on a Tuesday evening and telling you that he thinks you have what it takes to make it as a soccer player.
I felt like I could walk on water that day. It taught me the impact someone’s words can have on you.
One sentence he has probably long forgotten, has stayed with me for life.
So of course what happens? I do like we all do: I left the seminar from walking on water, and back to reality. I went back into my shell and didn’t make my first mobility post like I told Kswiss I would.
And what happens? Kswiss DM’s me on Instagram “where’s that first post? I don’t see it”.
Oh fuck. “I’ll have it up by Sunday I swear!”. Double fuck!!
I used to be all fluff, but I had committed to becoming a man of my word by then. If I make a promise I will keep it.
At around 11pm on that Sunday night, I made my first post.
A few weeks later, I got my first client, and the rest is history. It all snowballed from there.
So there we go. That’s how the journey got started!!!
What a random empowering journey it was. I never thought I’d be here, but that’s the beauty of it.
You don’t know life will take you. Your passions are constantly evolving and changing. I have moved onto coaching other things since the mobility. That’s how it works.
Nothing is set in stone, its a constant process of cultivating your passions.
Following Your Own Path (Ikigai)
You can’t start with the end in mind if you don’t know what that end is. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you even start.
Cultivate courage & trust in yourself that you will make the right decisions once you are on this path. Follow the crumbs of curiosity.
Trusting yourself is the way to keep moving forward and navigating the unknown. Don’t worry about ‘is this the right decision to follow this or not’.
Understand that every decision, is the right decision.
If you feel the spark and want to follow it then do – it’ll either turn into a flame or it will die out.
Either way: it was the right decision. Because it has taught you more about yourself and what you like/don’t like.
That’s progress and a deeper understanding of yourself. Which are crucial checkpoints on your own path that will all make sense once you look back over it in years to come. With that 20/20 hindsight vision.
When you find your passion(s), you can move to the next step if you want.
This is where you find the intersection of:
- meaning
- fulfillment
- sustainable profit
- a useful service to the world
It takes time. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle you don’t have the map for.
Keep laying down pieces each day until you see the patterns. Brick by brick, you will build your future.
I only realised afterwards that the path I took is similar to the Japanese concept called ‘Ikigai: a reason for being’.
Which states that your passion/purpose or ‘reason for being’ is at the intersection of:
- Doing what you love
- Doing what you are good at
- In something the world needs
- In something you can be paid for
This is why one of my north stars in life is to follow the results. Becuase they usually all lead in the same direction, no matter what religion, ethnicity, tribe, country etc you are from.
I took random bits from wise men of the west to show how I found my passion & purpose in life, then I find out the men of the east had the same forumla!
Humans all have the same fundamental needs and desires in life, whether you realise it or not.
One of them is a life of passion & purpose. Being your true self on a missin helping others in things you love.
If humans have no passion or purpose, they stray towards pleasure. To meet our needs in more destructive ways.
Do you think a drug addict wants to be miserable? No, they are escaping something. That moment on drugs is the only moment they can be numb and away from it all.
They could have taken that route, or a route to healing and create purpose in helping other addicts overcome drug addiction.
You see how in one scenario he’s a hero, and in the other scenario he’s a villain. But its the same human, just led down different paths.
As you can see in most people (including myself): usually your passion/purpose is linked to solving your own problems. Solving the issues that plagued your life.
Why does this work? Because YOU are the target market. You have been through it and know the way out, so you can speak to people like the younger you as you know exactly what’s its like.
You know what they are going through, and what they need to hear.
How did I build a business coaching people in:
1) Physical Freedom
2) Mental Freedom
3) Lifestyle Design
It’s because for most of my life I struggled & settled for:
1) Chronic pain & injury (Had to give up sports & activities I loved. Lost my Physical Freedom)
2) Social anxiety & not being my true self (Lived behind a mask. Imprisoned by my own mind. No Mental Freedom)
3) Stuck in 9-5s I had no passion & purpose for (Building someone else’s vision over my own. No Lifestyle Design blueprint)
At 23, I finally committed to building the life true to myself or die trying. For me, and nobody else.
But once I:
Regained my Physical Freedom and got back to sports I love. Attained Mental Freedom and became who I knew I could be. Created the Lifestyle Design that I wanted.
My purpose since then is to inspire & educate others on the same path. Those who don’t want to settle for anything less than the life true to themselves. I quit my Facebook job in 2019 to pursue this full time and never looked back.
You can turn your mess into your message.
You can turn the poison from your life into a tonic for others.
We all have our medicine to offer the world.
If you are ready to cultivate your passion & purpose, join us in the Lifestyle Design University.
Don’t Settle,
Mark