ABOUT US

Our Story

It begins in a sleepy village housing estate in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds in England.

We were your stereotypical young married couple with four young children, struggling to be successful, keep up with the ‘Jones’, and build the ‘perfect’, or so we thought world around us.

Cheryl had suffered from chronic back pain since we met in our late teens, and then in our early 30’s life for Mark was often doing the chores of both of us. Life was difficult. But we had everything or, so we thought!

Every aspect of our lives was manicured in some way. Just like the square patch of lawn we had. It always needed to have its edges neatly trimmed against the regimented creosote fence that imprisoned us in our small insulated world of ‘everything is just fine’.

Our 3-year old daughter would be playing on the patch of village green with friends at the front of the house, and the neighbours would also be mowing their lawns. It was like a sitcom. Mark would be often found in our shoebox sized garage rearranging the same paraphenalia of life he'd cleared the week before.

We'd pretty much become like happy zombies. Until one day we started to challenge whether or not we needed all this stuff in our lives. It was Mark that first had this thought, followed by the question "there must be more to life than this?”

A True Juxtaposition

The juxtaposition was striking. Our possessions piled up in the garage and around the house. Stuff we never used but had just in case. Cheryl's chronic back pain limiting what she could do. Mark's days eroded by household chores, making up for tasks which Cheryl couldn't manage through her pain. His working day extended by a three hour round trip commute to work and back.

We recognized something needed to change.

We each had lots of assumptions about what is right and wrong in life. How the world works, and how we both should act in a civilized community. However, when faced with true diversity – that is, diversity of experience — we began to realise that our assumptions needed to be challenged. 

Mark had already spent much of his life dwelling on events from the past that seemed unfair and choices he'd made that caused him to feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

Obsessed with The Norm?

We were both obsessed with what should have happened in life. What shouldn't have happened. What we should have done, what we shouldn't have done, and how everything would be better if we could both just go back and change it.

It dawned on us that if we kept telling ourselves the same old limiting stories, we were going to continue to live the story of now based on a sad one from before.

The fantastic news is that we decided to change how we interpreted yesterday, how we view ourselves in response, and therefore how we live today as a result.

We Teach Life Skills does just this….

We all too often get trapped to study hard at school, get great grades, pass exams, go to university, get a good job, work really hard, get promoted, strive for a bigger salary and benefits package… work even harder.  

All the time getting further and further into the trap of striving to own things and climb the corporate ladder to somewhere better.

Life is way too short to waste on another man's treadmill.

Our lives' twists and turns have been dramatic, often painful, stressful and wearisome.

But along the straights, it has been joyful, happy and often miraculous (yes we have a spiritual side too.) It has made us better people, parents, spouses and business partners.

Time to Clean Up our Lives not Our House

We knew we had things wrong when we looked at all our cleaning products. Why did Cheryl think she needed over seven different types of cleaning products to valet the house?

Our four children attended private school, we had large outgoings on our home, and ‘yes’ we had two new BMWs parked on the drive!

We took annual holidays abroad, subscribed to private healthcare care and plenty of personal debt to keep us stressed into the bargain!

Finally, it dawned on us perhaps, just maybe, we had lost the plot?

The world is full of people enduring great suffering. There are millions without homes, yet we had reached the point where having several different cleaning products under our sink was seen through our eyes as an important choice. These symbolised our approach in numerous areas of our lives. 

Why had we led ourselves astray where we valued such unnecessary things and worked so hard to protect them so much? We've since learned that actually, one cleaner is good enough for everything.

Create a New Direction for Life

Enough was enough.

It was time to create a new story, a new direction for all of our lives.

We embarked upon a journey that would transform our lives forever.

We began navigating to a point where we stripped away much of what we owned. Jettisoning wasteful and un-serving habits. Changing our lifestyles. Re-evaluating everything we had come to accept as a normal life.

Our lessons have been tough. Most have been how to handle the powerful emotional dynamics, not the practicalities of change.

For example, pulling our three children from a private education was practically straightforward. Yet the emotions involved were very difficult to navigate. It took months and months of deliberation and answering of endless "What ifs?"

But now over 15 years on, we have transformed our lives and those of our children.

We are still learning and haven't completely cracked it. It's work in progress, especially as we continue to stretch ourselves, grow as individuals and attend to each area of our lives.

We have strengthened our relationships (the ones we cherish the most) and have charted a course for the rest of our lives that is based not on what we should do, but on what we get joy from doing.

We are free from the pressures to follow the pack, buy the next gadget, be loyal to the 'right' brands. We have conquered our fears of what if this and what if that.

We are both creative individuals in our own ways and have always been able to think outside of the box. We have backgrounds in training, personal development and coaching and are very much people persons.

We have been through pain and experienced the devastation of a home ruined by earthquakes helping us to put perspective on life.

So here we are, filled with a burning desire to help you reset your life and awaken your passionate-self so you can reclaim your freedom and live your life to the full.

Are you ready to rumble?