Personal Transformation – From Home to Healing

From the age of sixteen, I’ve been transforming people’s homes.
My main trade has always been as a decorator. Working in the Cotswolds, it’s been a colourful experience. Posh paints and beautiful surroundings. Houses that cost millions and houses that don’t but could qualify for that price tag because of the contents and beautiful people that live in them.

I’ve had clients who have made me welcome and others who have looked down on me but that’s the same for most jobs out there in the big wide world. No matter what, we or I, depending on who was on the job, have always given the project the transformation it deserved.

The appreciation in the words of the client or the look on their faces at the end result is priceless. All the hard work, the sweat, the tantrums, it’s all worth it. Yes, even I have the odd tantrum! When a part of a job becomes a ‘ball acher’, feet stomp and I have to walk away for ten minutes. It’s the only cure!

Back in 2012, after completing a 28-day rehab programme, I knew my personal transformation was only just beginning. It wasn’t enough to pause—it was time to pivot. I stepped away from the construction industry and spent two years studying counselling fundamentals, laying the groundwork for a deeper journey into life coaching, hypnotherapy and eye movement therapy.

Along the way, I supported homeless individuals through night shelter shifts and supported accommodation work. I helped build community assets, ran an eBay shop and even revitalised an allotment with my clients, planting hope where weeds once grew. 

It completely changed my outlook on life. I learned new skills, became less self-centred and passed my knowledge on to my clients, enabling them to also transform their lives, working on their own personal transformation.

My son is an adult who has a son of his own and of course, a life of his own.  I still haven’t achieved all the things I’m supposed to accomplish. You know the stuff that they teach us at school!

I never wanted the career, the mortgage and the car on the drive. The marriage certificate was always just a bit of paper in my eyes. Although now I kind of wish I had achieved that one. 
Are these really ‘normal’ things we’re meant to achieve? I mean, they tell us that’s what we should aim for. Who are ‘they’ anyway?

The future for me holds a little more personal transformation. Why dump a habit that’s been around for the last 38 years?
BUT! It’s a big ‘BUT’! I intend to relax a little more. Work on my quality of life and spend more time with family and in nature. Life is way too short to always be trying to achieve and work on personal transformation 24/7.