Lets resume my story before i moved to dubai. Let’s rewind back to March 2021. At this time, it was in the middle of covid. I had been working at home for about one year at this stage. I was training to become a personal trainer with image fitness. I was starting to get into the gym and i wanted to become a personal trainer because i was obsessed with sports. I was slowly starting to dip my toes into self development and spirituality. I found it all confusing and overwhelming but i started to read self development books but still, i wwas very naive to the whole world of mental health and wellbeing.
I remember my first self development book i read was the subtle art of not giving a fuck by mark manson. This was the book that sparked my interest in self development so i started to read more about the subject. But again, im still very unconscious and have no awareness or understanding surrounding self development and spirituality. I was working in a great stable sales job, with a great team, for a great company. I drove an audi. I have my own horse named sammy. I was in a relationship. I would spend the week with him and the weekend at home in west cork. You could say that i had everything i wanted on paper. Thats what it looked like anyway.
Myself and my boyfriend decided to move to dubai. We always wanted to travel the world together and so he chose dubai. I said perfect no problem, wherever you go, ill follow. So i handed in my notice to my business job in Cork, I sold my horse Sammy. I sold my audi car. And i got ready to pack up my life. Previous to this decision to move ot dubai, bare in mind, i had no intention to travel the world whatsoever. I had zero interest in it, i was a home bird and wanted to become a ceo of a multi national corporation in ireland and be rich. But my boyfriend was going to be living there so i said okay lets try this out.
I arrived in dubai and i started working in real estate. Work mistake i ever made. Not only did i pick the wrong company to go with, it was a 100 percent commission job. I came in full of energy, hungry to succeed so i wish i could bottle that energy and have went with the other company i got offered but unfortunately i didnt and from there it all went downhill. Myself and my boyfriend decided to part ways after only spending 10 days together. Ill neevr forget that day. Sat on a hotel bed while we went off to work, packing up my stuff. No one to call. No one to help me. No where to live. I went straight onto facebook and thankfully, found irish girls to live with. I was 23, alone in a foreign country, my first time living abroad, in a job that doesnt even pay me, with no friends, thinking “what the fuck is happening”.
I continued in the real estate job and that was just a terrible time. I wasnt making any money, i was working 7 days a week killing myself with doing countless viewings for no result. If a client said jump i would say how high as they paid my wages. It was a thankless and soulless job and it just required me to be a completely fake version of myself that i didnt want to be. In the first week of my new job i got a flat tyre and was stuck out on the palm for god knows how long trying to get someone to come and help me. I think about one month in i got covid and was stuck in my bedroom in my apartment for 10 days. I was drinking my savings. I had started with over 15,000 euro and this as going down and down, fast. There was so many shit things happening trying to wake me up to move and change but i was completely asleep to it all.
And so the dark night of the soul starts to happen. Slowly i start to lose my soul and my spark for life. I didnt make many friends in dubai for months. It was a lonely time. I was stressed off my head trying to make money at work. I started binge drinking every weekend. I was burning myself out in the gym and exercising to keep me busy so i didnt have to sit with my thoughts. My skin broke out in horrific acne because of my diet over there. I was suffering from heartbreak from a breakup where absolutely nothing was done to change it or save it only lets just leave this, thank you goodbye. I had no self respect, no self love. My soul was empty. I was on auto pilot just going through life. I drank every single weekend for one year. I would go to a brunch, spend 100 euro, get absolutely pissed, throw up in the toilet at 3am and be up at 7am to do a full day of viewings on the sunday when i should be at the beach and not even get any deals from it.
A few things started to happen that began to wake me up as to how i was living my life.
Ill always remember the first event. I had a millionaire client out on a viewing. I was showing him around the apartment and doing the usual, how are you, where are you from, what hobbies do you have etc to get to know him. He said to me oh i love boxing. I said alright cool and i kept showing him around the apartment. 10 minutes later i ask him if he has any hobbies. He again said oh i love boxing. I then replied oh my god i do too and we started having a conversation about our boxing trainings. I was completely oblivious and unaware that i had asked him this exact question 10 minutes earlier. We ended up getting him his dream apartment so he wanted to take me out for dinner to say thank you. He worked as a psychologist or something similar and he was telling me about myself as i told him i was huge into human behaviour and i wanted him to give me his honest opinion on my own behaviour. He said i had no awareness, no consciousness and was completely ignorant in my presence and listening abilities. I remember being taken aback when he told me this. I am such a people person so this was a hard comment to take but it was like a lightbulb came on. It was my first time hearing the words consciousness and awareness. I remember when i got home i started looking up these words and this is what opened up my whole world and where my passion comes from on learning about waking up to life, becoming aware of how we are living life. What consciousness is, how we are always caught up in the past and future and rushing from one place to another never actually living in the present moment.
Slowly day by day i was starting to become more aware of how i was as a person and how i was living life. An awareness i never had before as i was completely numb to it all. I was obsessed with the gym in dubai and wanted to be a successful personal trainer so i was immersing myself in fitness podcasts everyday. I remember i was listening to brian keanes podcast and he had someone on called gerry hussey. I usually only listened to fitness people but this randomly came on so i said i would give it a few minutes.
Gerry spoke about chasing the feeling of being enough and how this leads us down a path of toxic people or destructive behaviors, Healing emotional wounds from the past and learning to integrate them so they don’t control you any longer, Why we can only operate out of a place of fear or love – never both, The “unlovable” core wound and working through it, Why learning to forgive yourself is the biggest gift you can ever give yourself, The reason we have to face it to feel it to heal it and then we can move on, The Power of Letting Go: letting go of the fear of not being enough, letting go of ego and labels, letting go of restrictive mindsets, letting go of our old thinking habits and creating new brain pathways, letting go of dis-ease of distraction. How to ask yourself ‘are you speaking misery or happiness into existence?’ and the power of your words or self-talk. How to follow your heart and go after the things that you want Silencing that inner critique How to rewire your mindset to ‘I am enough’. Ill never forget where i was at that moment. Doing my daily ritual of walking around dubai marina as i always did each and every night. I remember tears coming down my face as i slowly realised what the fuck has happened, what am i doing to myself. I was never the same after listening to that podcast, and this is when the fire in my belly was started. Very soon, i was to make a big decision and change my life.
Work was getting worse and worse. After 9 months of this job, it was really taking its toll on me. I was so unhappy. Exhausted. Unfulfilled. And for some stupid reason, still working in this stupiod job. God if i could go back in time and shake me up to quit that job sooner than i did. And stop being a stubborn taurus trying to prove to other people that iwas going to be successful. Even if i was successful, the job was making me be a person i didnt want to be. I was nearly at the end of my time in real estate and i came home from work, fell down on my bed and tears just came from my eyes. I am a person who rarely cries so this was huge alarm bells for me.
I had gone to the bottom of the barrel. I was empty. I was broken. I had nothing left in life. When you have everything taken away from you in life, and you go to that deep dark place. You only have two choices. Sink or swim. Ill never forget the conversation i had with myself that day. I said to myself, maryrose you have two choices here. You can continue on living the way your living life in a depressive soulless way, or you can decide to change the story. Rewrite how this narrative goes. Put in the work and do the healing.
At this time i was reading james smith not a lifecoach book. Of course i was reading it because i was obsessed with james smith at the time and thought it was a fitness book when it was the opposite. James smith spoke about: Do you love your job? Does your future excite you? Are your relationships working for you?
James Smith challenges you on everything you thought you knew about the path to fulfilment and happiness. With hard-hitting home truths and a helping of tough love, he had subconsciously prepared me re-set your outlook, redefine your goals and truly consider:
Now, more than ever, it was the time to take back control. Time to stop sleep-walking through my life; to challenge the status quo; and to truly ask myself if I am on the right path to success, happiness and fulfilment. At the end of the day, only you can take the reins of your own life and choose to make a change. I find this is my why behind my own coaching when i work with people on their self develoipent and spirituality journey, my own experience, my hunger for genuine happiness, and my drive to be the kind of coach someone needed when their life was broken like me, i can help to give the tools to do it.
I went into work the next day. I typed out my resignation later and handed it to my manager. I left that day and never came back. That day, was the start of a long and incredible journey of me taking my life back. Wanting to love life again. Wanting to be my happiest self. Wanting to feel fulfilled each day. Wanting to share this healing, love and light with other people. Yes of course, the time after was horrific at times. Like a rollercoaster. There was great times and sad times. Times i fucked up and times i was doing so well. But that is the healing process. It is not a linear job. It is all over the place. Im going to leave it there for my breakdown and what ultimately led to my awakening and my life being changed forever. Of course there are alot more details but i dont want to go too long and crazy with these episodes. In part 3 of my story i will discuss my whole process and journey of my healing journey, the ups and downs, me vs my ego, what i did to heal, the books, the podcasts, the healing modalitiies, the qualifications, the end of my life in dubai, life in bali etc. thank you so much for reading.