Cannibal Zombies everywhere!

Did I ever tell you about the time when I was a gross cannibal zombie?

 

I remember back in 2007,

I was partying hard, too much as usual my buddy Louis had just given me another pill, I was already three sheets to the wind and was being pestered by a rather sexually aggressive Russian woman. I wasn’t used to this kind of attention, being a brit and everything but I was intrigued!

I would’ve taken her up on her offer had it not been for the fact she said she had just divorced her husband, I was imagining some 200 kilogram spetnaz fighter charging in and ripping my head off….

So needless to say.. carrying on dancing my head off like a nutter was the safest option there…..  at least so I thought.

 

So here I am, dancing away in London in a bar aptly named the Russian bar, off my head as they say,

crunching away on a mint imperial, except this mint imperial isn’t very minty, kind of chalky with no flavour, I thought it was the beer at first killing my taste buds.

Then I stuck my tongue into a giant hole in my back molar, that wasn’t a mint imperial, that was half of my back tooth I was gurning and crunching away at.

At the time I just swallowed the remains of my tooth and carried on partying, it wasn’t until the next day that the dust had settled that I started to get to grips with what had happened.

I had self-cannibalised my own tooth!!

And I was in full on zombie mode…..

 

I had indeed ground my back tooth into a crumbly mess, the first thing that went through my mind was Jesus, I’m only 25 and my teeth are crumbling, I was disgusted at myself , I took a long hard look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I thought to myself if this is happening to my teeth, then what about my bones? What about my other vitals, my organs, how long could I go on like this?

I was really skinny, I had very little muscle, I wouldn’t say I necessarily felt bad at the time, but then it’s amazing what over time we can convince ourselves is normal, my body was showing certain signs of giving up. And you don’t really feel it, and are out of touch with your body when you are constantly on booze and drugs …..

 

Looking back I realise I was going through some sort of depression, it’s hard to see it while you’re in it, I had hit the bottle and substances hard after my ex-girlfriend died,

What made it even worse was that she was almost to be released from hospital and died a week before her release from complications,

my immediate friends meant well to try to cheer me up, mostly with booze, more booze and extra booze….

I remember coming home alone most nights after and just bursting into tears, a grown man crying is not a pleasant sight and even frowned upon by society, so was best done alone.

The work that I was doing was really unfulfilling,  and didn’t feel enough for me, the marketing jobs where you were encouraged to lie about products and services for greed.

The bar work where you’d be serving people booze to the point of oblivion, where you know full well it’s not doing them any favours,

When was it the last straw for me?  Rock bottom for this job?

Was a pregnant woman hiding her bump and getting me to serve her, I said no more to this…. That was a real low point for me.

I was seriously stuck in a dead-end , it’s a total cliché , a dead-end town, a dead-end job, my relationships were crap , my friends around me had their own issues that were projecting onto me, dragging me out to drown their own sorrows and confusions with booze.

I eventually  landed a London job in recruitment, I started of really enthusiastic about this.

It was a job, but felt hollow, and I had no purpose, at least not a purpose beyond shifting others around towards their “dream” jobs there had to be more to life that just making enough money for booze drugs fags food, rent.

I was getting up at 5am, returning at 10pm in the evening.

4 hours a day on the train, taxed to the hilt and just breaking even with bills, and then smashing your brains out at the weekend or the days in the week.

How many times was I hanging at the desk the next day drooling on the keyboard, with the boss unimpressed!

Three strikes and you’re out Mr. !

I was on my second strike when the clocks went forward an hour, this was before I had a smart phone so I was and hour late, I tried to tell them that before I was an hour early back when the clocks went back, but they didn’t care and booted me out !

Lesson learned there is that people tend to notice your mistakes a hundred fold over the right things you do… and also that if people can’t see your value then it’s not always the right place for you.

Top tip : Don’t waste time on people who can’t see your value.

So what happened? what did I do I hear you ask !

Obviously the story doesn’t end there as depressing as it is …

Before I tell you how I dug myself out of this deep dark hole, and turned my life around, here’s a little bit of personal history that expands on what was going through my mind ….

Read on ….

 

 

Purposeless Rats in cages

I remember having some great thoughts and dreams when I was younger, growing up as a kid, I always had these grand ideas of being something fantastic, like an astronaut,

me and my brother used to set up these space stations in the front room with tables chairs and sheets and imagine dealing with some kind of space odyssey or catastrophe. Because that’s the only two things you get in space …. It’s either wonder or disaster ….

But I know what you’re thinking, as jobs go that’s pretty high up the qualification list, so I don’t think I ever told the careers advisor that one!

I could never really decide it wasn’t that I was not interested in anything, quite the opposite; I had interest in too many things!

This led me to constantly be chasing the flavour of the month, with no real follow through or direction, I very rarely finished things and projects. Lack of overall purpose prevailed.

And as this carried on and compounded through life it generally led to substandard standards in life.

Including the standard of my own physical and mental health. As a result my social health and surrounding also suffered.

Was it shiny object syndrome?

Was it constantly being distracted?

Was I using these distractions as a way of not forming any healthy introspective and insight, a way of being dishonest with myself?

Like how someone will bury themselves in work to ignore physical or emotional trauma and pain.

Knowing what I know now, with age comes wisdom, and like I said before if I hadn’t turned my life around I most likely wouldn’t be here telling this all to you, I’d have to spook you beyond the grave and haunt you !

Allowing yourself to be taken of course or even not knowing what course you’re on , that’s how lost people can get such as myself, it’s one thing to be without a map, but to not know where and why you’re going somewhere is another level of lost entirely…

You must stand for something otherwise you will fall for anything …..

I suffered my way through the dead end jobs, swinging from shiny bauble to the next, one pyramid scheme to another, surrounded by low quality information that was designed to hook lost souls like me.

That bad attitude carried over to any job I took on, I was going from job to job, idea to idea half-baked plan to half-baked plan, Then it dawned on me that you don’t build a house on sand , Rome wasn’t built in a day, I needed to have a solid plan or else Rome would fall and burn …

A song lyric that really reminds me of this period of my life is smashing pumpkin’s “ despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage “

Which is really appropriate as there’s an experiment on rat , that when deprived of things to do that they find meaningful , in effect having their purpose removed they are more prone to addiction, in this case it was either alcohol or cocaine.

So how did I find my purpose?

Or at least start finding a purpose , as you can have more than one, having none is no way to be.

But before I tell you what I did, let me tell you about what Pharoes pyramids and slaves have got to do with my journey …

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Pyramids for kings and get rich quick schemes

 

We all know that pyramids are built for kings, but they didn’t get their hands dirty much did they?

They were always using some good old slaves to do their heavy lifting, the same can be said of any pyramid scheme, whether it’s selling things or things you eat or shake, I tried it, I kept on convincing myself that I was going to get stinking rich if only I listened to what they told me and did or what they said…. I was such a golden fool for them.

 

You see their business models are heavily dependent on a certain kind of slavery nowadays, a modern slavery,

the slavery of ignorance combined with hope,

and it helps if you have very little money, no experience in business of course, and to be terrible at maths!

All this combined with a blind hardworking work ethic and extreme hope you would be capable of building huge empires … for other people!

 

I eventually saw the man behind the curtain in this instance, it took quite a few years though and quite a few disappointments.

And to this day I am totally against sharp business practices and wild claims and promises, I’m extra careful to make sure that what people say match up to the facts of the matter and aren’t some hyperbole to just get you to get alongside.

Your time is precious and time wasted you never get back, there’s nothing worse than investing time and money in something that doesn’t work, and even being blamed personally for it not working to enforce you to tow the line and buy in more !

This is why what I do now is the complete opposite of that, its honest genuine and transparent, it works and is effective, I’ve gone through it myself and used it myself.

I still do!

I remember back to a part of my journey when I needed the knowledge of how to lose weight and gain fitness back….

 

 

Trust the process.. or not

 

I remember seeing a photo of myself in the sea while abroad and not recognizing myself, usually a really skinny guy too skinny, now after two years of overfeeding and inactivity looked like a whale!  a grey unhealthy looking bloated whale…

Yet again it was time for a change in scenery…

When I came back from abroad teaching English, I retrained as a fitness instructor, my health abroad had taken a bashing as the life of an English teacher wasn’t the best

Culturally ,it was the kind of place where if you went for a jog people would assume you were up to something, and teaching involves loads of sitting ,  asides from the occasional bouts of football and Silat classes I didn’t have any real fitness  structure in place, Silat is Indonesia’s cultural martial art.

I also knew next to nothing about fitness and nutrition , and a diet of heavily fried food still delicious and plentiful and the national favourite drink of heavily sugared tea, and a diet of two packs of cigarettes a day , got a skinny guy like me overweight,

and not the good kind of overweight, the phrase is skinny fat, low muscle mass but high body fat on a usually skinny guy looks like a fat chest and belly and skinny arms and legs.

So slimming back down and learning about health fitness and nutrition was on the agenda on my return, I was my own personal project.

 

So I hammered the gym, seven days a week, I’d finish off with huge endurance cardio four hours at a time.

I used all the information that I learned about muscles and anatomy and exercises, hammered it for more than a year , I lost weight … I lost body fat, but I also lost muscle, or to be specific I never really gained much muscle…. I still had sparrow legs and arms, yes I know what you’re thinking, sparrows don’t have arms!

But I dint get it I was doing all the things that I had learned… how could I be putting in all this effort and still not get the results I wanted ?

Was I doomed to always be a skinny rake of a man!?!?!

Doomsayer

Feeling doomed is really a great way of putting it, feeling like no matter how much effort I could put into something, eventually my motivation would just fizzle out and the project or goal that I would be aiming for your fall out of view, it was much easier then,

for me to latch onto something else, with the prospect of the immediate victory fix of novelty. Much better for me to do that than deal with this curse or hex of trying to gain serious muscle.

It really is the very definition of self-sabotage, putting in tremendous effort and then eventually just giving up because the results wouldn’t come in soon enough; no matter how motivated I was, no matter how much I wanted it at the time.

I always had a profound respect for people who could just get on with something and complete it, I still do, but how could I and indeed how did I become that person who could finish something , achieve what I wanted and set out to do ,

To turn your life around like I did takes almost unlimited patience with yourself and an ever abundant flow of motivation, so many things would chip away at this, I learned almost limitless patience for others teaching English… you need it or you’ll go mad!

Another skill being tested daily, as a parent of two.

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Every day there would be some mishap, some obstacle, some drama would de motivate me and get in my way either from myself or from others

What was the secret sauce to this?

Surely I wasn’t special in this regard, the problems I encountered were the same or similar to most right?

All human problems ….

It was always so easy and the easier option to escape the reality of losing control of my projects, the drugs booze and parties were calling, I didn’t have anything to celebrate of course, I would just say hey, because it’s a Wednesday! Yeah I was that guy.

For others there vices would be bingeing of any kind, to distract and occupy our mind and senses away from our needed commitments to ourselves.

It’s so easy to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich ….

Balance Grasshopper

 

I’ve always admired people who seem to have it all, awesome family, friends, job they love, fit and healthy body they seem to be sorted, and in this day and age of social media and keeping up appearances there is a massive element of just that … keeping up appearances…

 

Let’s be honest, do you really think everyone’s life is really all peachy and non-stop holidays and parties like it is on the social media?

 

I doubt it , and I have it from good authorities that’s the case, professional therapists are always talking about famous celebs who are depressed and they are loaded and look like they have it all, without seeming nasty , that should make you feel a little better right, take the pressure off slightly. I can confirm this is true for myself and others I know personally…

 

Even on my social media I don’t post ALL the warts and all, some people do and that’s good for them, the big brother house effect is alive and well.

But most put their best face forward. If you have the time you can track my social history way back to near on the time that I’ve talked about at the start, and my photos are all smiles and nothing looks wrong at all, the real story in reality was a huge difference, it was messy and depressing.

So if that’s the case what’s the real story , and what’s the real solution to all this modern social mayhem ?

To find this out we are going to have to have some huge introspective and dig deep, truth and honesty, enough of the façade and what we tell ourselves and others to get on ..getting on …

We want to thrive and not just merely survive our lifetime…

Becoming a dad of two really put this aspect into perspective, but to get there I would also need to find more balance in all areas of life…

 

I wouldn’t have been suitable for my current life partner Kate if I hadn’t sorted myself out, and consequently would never be a dad of two, so what was the brainwave that set me off on the path of ultimate self-improvement?

 

 

 

Where do we go from here ?

 

So earlier I told you about the rock bottom situation I was in from the start , depressed, on the road to slow suicide through self-neglect, how did I sort myself out ?

Some would call it an epiphany , gaining of clarity , a stage of enlightenment, whatever you want to name it, that moment that night, crunching up my tooth like it was chalk, there’s something you can’t ignore, the universe was sending me a clear message…. Keep going this way, and I will grind you down to dust sooner than you think.

The penny had dropped from now on I said, “ I’m only going to make money from helping people AND I’m going to get healthier”.

I made the commitment to not drink, to run every day and do yoga and Pilates everyday…. It was a real blessing, as a club was offering a whole month free at their facility so I jumped at it, running of course was free, just needed some trainers and a few good routes with fresh air and nice scenery.

I really started to feel empowered, taking charge of my health, other areas of my life weren’t in control as such, yet the most immediate thing I could actually do something about was get healthier.

I still went out and socialised with my friends, but managed to stay committed to no alcohol, I even bumped into my yoga instructor while on a night out, and she was really surprised to see me with no alcohol in my hands, in a big drinking town like that it was quite a big deal and quite a challenge.

My immediate challenge that I could deal with, and take back control of in my runaway life was my health and fitness,

I didn’t know the big picture or why or what or how I’d do it, but I just knew I needed to feel better physically.

It was a start, I still knew very little about nutrition, or proper training, not as much as I do now, but it was a start.

What habits are you hanging onto right now?

Habits that you are using as a distraction from the pain to avoid the bigger things in life, things that the longer you leave the more you will miss, what’s getting in your way ?

 

 

Do you believe in yourself enough?

 

First let’s answer a more important question …..

 

How did I re- ignite and find my purpose?

Well, to put it simply

I decide to commit to challenging myself,

 

I took a big risk and followed my instinct, something that looked like a challenge, pushed me outside my comfort zone mentally or physically, could lead to greater things and yet it wasn’t the usual low barrier effort get rich quick style I usually undertook.

Quite often things come across your path that offer this kind of pattern interrupt, so I embarked on a teaching course abroad, and learned all about how to transmit information to students in a way that they will remember,

it’s a real challenge and I loved it, the moment when you see them get it, and start using the knowledge was like a massive dopamine hit for me… but a good one, one that does good things.

I got to change my scenery and surroundings and experience new language and cultures, this is a great tool for change.

And I wouldn’t have made that decision, if I wasn’t honest with myself and embraced personal truth.

 

 

 

Truth is the most important thing,

you can’t sell snake oil and sleep well at night,

well some can, but I can’t , I’ll leave that for them.

There’s loads of people out there who are fake , look a certain way and claim to be not on steroids for example, that’s there deal and that’s fine with me , but I’m not going to lie, I do what I lay out in my own program.

I do it because I love it and it works and has worked for me, it’s transformed me truly and wherever or whatever level you come in at, I know it will do the same for others and that’s why I want to get it out there.

There’s more to it than just making money and shifting a product, it’s about making a living from helping people, remember that’s my oath to myself that long time ago that set me on this path and journey.

Do you only accept truth and high quality information?

Or do you find yourself being cheated out of your precious time and energy ….

 

 

Speaking of wasting time and energy …..

 

Before I mentioned that I used to think I was doomed to stay a skinny rake of a guy, it seemed that no matter how much I trained I could never put on muscle, seven days a week down the gym five six hours a day at a time.

 

I was using ALL the machines, doing ALL the classes, so why wasn’t I changing how I wanted?

 

It turned out I was what you would call in the industry a “hard gainer” which basically means that based on my body type of ectomorph who is naturally inclined to be very skinny and the body doesn’t want to naturally put on too much muscle.

 

As my knowledge base grew, and I learned more from other experts, I realised I was actually doing too much and/or the wrong type of training, in this instance the cliché of less is more is very true, I needed to train more strength and power and less cardiovascular, and eat a LOT more of the right foods.

 

This made a huge difference and I started to see the muscle slowly and surely start packing onto my skeletal frame.

 

I realised I need to get my goal target right, otherwise how are you going to get what you want if you’re not clear on that!

Are you doing ALL the things?

Are you copying multiple workouts on YouTube and spending hours down the gym, are you running swimming and cycling for hours and hours at a time?

Do you just feel wrecked every day and unable to move?

 

But no matter what you are left tired and unsatisfied, and feeling like you waste so much time doing it for nothing?

More than likely you are doing what I did, which was too much of the wrong things, or as I’ve learned too little of the right things.

 

Quality always outdoes quantity, using the minimal amount of effort for maximum impact, getting the job done and completing the project.

 

But how do we keep up the motivation to complete these projects, whether it’s building a house or building a body or building a mind-set.

I found out after reading quite a few books and being inspired by quite a few seriously determined and unwavering people that the issue was the difference between motivation, and self-discipline,

I never even considered there was a difference!

But as it turns out there is , even though most people use the terms interchangeably , motivation has been proven to be a finite resource in our minds daily, whereas self-discipline is what you do regardless of what’s going on around you.

Think of it as bulletproof motivation.

 

Or as I like to call it Unstoppabull motivation, even if a Bull is having an off day he will still charge at you. It’s built into his instinct, his D.N.A.

 

Did our ancestors ever decide to have a day off hunting or farming, fending off predators, fighting invading enemies?

Most likely not, it was the difference between life and death, we have become rather soft in modern times, and the price we pay is feeling mediocre and unfulfilled.

Are you self-disciplined? Or are you using sheer will and motivation that eventually wears out…

Do you know truly the difference and how to apply that to your life?

 

And what’s more important, what’s the overall goal?

You see, the truth is that …..

No one has it totally perfect; the cards don’t get dealt like that,

and we quite often don’t play the game well or to the best of our abilities, to carry on using the poker analogy and metaphor, you can at least try to improve or even master the game of life balance, just not cheating ,

Yes it’s true the house always wins in the end, we are not immortal, but why not have a great game anyway!?

Becoming a dad twice over as exhausting and demanding as it is, I would never take it back, I can honestly say it has made me a better person than I was; this of course is true for me.

It has forced me to control my ego more and become less selfish, realising this is both humbling and makes me more determined.

What I’m suggesting that’s worked for me isn’t to become some kind of savant or rain man and card count our way through life and flawlessly ace every element of our life, but we can accept that we need, yet again a system to asses and measure and improve upon what’s there and going on, after all what gets measured gets changed!

In the end something will trigger you into knowing that failure is not an option, you must succeed, and you must win or be winning more in all the areas of life that matter, Family, Work, Health, Mind-set, Social …

for me it was becoming a dad, that was like the universe stamping a seal on me and saying , man you are in it for the long haul now, and if you mess it up it’s not just you who’s going to suffer now, so basically the universe has my family hostage.

And it’s up to me to be the hero in their life. They need protection form the zombie cannibals of the world. Because they ARE out there I should know ….. and they are hungry, they will mindlessly destroy the world and society as we know it if left unchallenged, unchanged.

Is your life balanced or at least shifting in a favourable way into balance?

Do you have a system that works to help you achieve this and attain accountability to get into this state?

Do you want it ALL in all areas of life, but will feel better if there’s honesty and improvement in ALL areas instead?

Most people when asked would say they want a long healthy and happy life…

Do you want exceptional results in the progress of your mind and body with a balanced life?

 

Are you ready to take the bull by the horns and get it done?

 

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The Training program and method I have created is called the Turnbull Training  Triform  Method

And it focuses on three crucial things for massive transformation in your life,

 

Your Body

Your Mind

Your Life Balance

 

Within these three are subcategories that you will work on and improve upon

The reason these are the top three main focuses is that if you removed any of them, quality of life is drastically reduced. And not only do we want to live a long life but also a healthy happy fulfilling one.

 

Am I right?

If you have read this far then you are ready for more…..

 

An open and inquisitive mind prepared for change is all that’s needed.

 

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