Damian Duguid

Education

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  Higher education

  Founder/Director Different Level CIC

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  Work experience

  Life Coach/Mentor
  Damian Duguid Coaching Services
  Jan 2017 – present · 8 years
  self employed

  Workshop Facilitator
  The Inspirational Learning Group · Self-employed
  Mar 2022 – Present · 3 years 10 months

  LEAD LIFE COACH
  Head Held High Ltd · Self-employed
  Nov 2020 – Present · 5 years
  LONDON

  Workshop Facilitator
  Wipers Youth C.I.C · Self-employed
  Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 · 3 years 1 month

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  Professional courses

  You know that violence doesn’t solve anything, right? So why do you keep beating yourself up about the changes you haven’t made? Do you feel like you are not reaching your potential? Stuck in a rut? Not making progress? Then put the can of coke down and listen.

  You want to make that career/job change, that move up the hierarchy, that leap from the 9-5. You want to live with an (increased) sense of purpose, but you feel conflicted because change is difficult for you. You don’t feel confident enough to know what to do. So instead of focusing on your goals, you are procrastinating, you have lost motivation. Your time management has become poor because of constant distractions. You are not sleeping well, you’re eating rubbish, and when was the last time you went to the gym? What you want is to be living is with better communication and assertiveness so you can let people know how you really feel and think. You want to feel confident in yourself and your decisions so that you can look at life with optimism. You want to develop the persistence to stay focused on your goals allowing you to enjoy happiness, peace, and success. I can help. I am Damian Duguid, an international happiness and success coach who helps people find their direction in life through my simple four-step system designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be: Results from the transformational process include Mindset Mastery, Purpose and Values Alignment, Confidence and Stress Management.

  I was that kid who was afraid to put his hand up in class. I was that child who tried to make himself invisible when the teacher wanted to know the answer to the question. I was the kid who made up fantasies about my life so that I seemed cooled than I was.

  I was that kid who had

  LOW SELF ESTEEM- I didn’t feel loved at home, so I struggled to love myself. Mum’s focus was on academic achievement. There was no room for emotions and affection. So I felt lonely and isolated inside. I got on with the other kids, but I quickly became a people pleaser and a liar. I would make up stories and pretend my life was better than it was. I had already started comparing myself to other children, and I always came off worse. We were very poor, so I did not have the latest toys or clothes, and this affected how I felt about myself. I was the classic case of an absent father, rejecting mother. I was taught good values like punctuality and health and hygiene but not how to love or even like myself.

  This manifested into

  LOW CONFIDENCE

  I was scared to take on tasks in school, especially practical subjects like Art and Woodwork. I was scared of getting it wrong. Scared of failure. So I always ended up getting things wrong. I can remember dreading lessons like woodwork because we would use a saw and I would not be able to saw a straight line because I was so lacking in confidence. In the first year at secondary school, a boy had to show me how to draw a tree in basic form because I was too scared to attempt it.

  This continued throughout my life. I lacked ASSERTIVENESS, and this led to poor career choices in my younger years. I also used to let people walk all around me. Life went over my head. I had no SENSE OF PURPOSE much to the annoyance of my mum. I wasn’t very MOTIVATED to do anything with my life. I was drifting from one encounter to another.

  Then I discovered partying and socialising, putting it mildly. I was following the crowd. I wanted to be part of it. I came alive on the dancefloor I was able to let go of my inhibitions. To be free. People liked me in the party days, or so I thought I was the life and soul of the party. I had the confidence I always wanted, but it wasn’t confidence; it was bravado.

  I got to the point where I thought I was invincible. It was the mid-nineties, and I was in my prime. I had more money than my mates and more status because I was involved in dodgy dealings. I was living the dream, and I had just been given my first home, a council flat. I had everything I desired and then disaster I came down with DEPRESSION. Only I did not know what the hell happened. One minute I was fine then the next thing WHOOSH. I don’t know if it was suddenly having more responsibility than my mates, but I looked down something didn’t seem right, and I lost my mind. The feelings and emotions I experienced over the next six months, I would not wish on anybody. I have never been that low in my life. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t perform on my girlfriend. I couldn’t face anyone I knew in the street. I was a mental wreck. I self-medicated to be able to cope, but I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t know how to manage at all.

  Finally, I went to the GP, and they confirmed I was depressed and gave me medication. This improved me, and I have never experienced the darkness I felt before then.

  But depression changed me; I was never the same person I was before. Before that, I was drifting along and wasting life. Now I realised there was more to life than partying. I need to find a career. The dodgy deals wouldn’t last forever.

  I threw myself into studying and taking courses and achieving qualifications firstly in sport and then in Youth Work.

  Youth work found me, and it proved to be my destiny, my sense of purpose. A career advisor asked me if I wanted to do youth work for Ealing Council. I said No, but she persuaded me—still a people pleaser at this point. Anyway, I aced the interview without even trying, and then I waltzed through the job process and the qualifications with relative ease. I was a natural, born to do it.

  I was happy with my career, and it went from strength to strength, but I was suppressing my emotions-fearful of that dark period happening again and forever thoughtful about why I was never truly the way I was before. I was already rubbish in romantic relationships before, but this made me worse. I didn’t tell anyone about my depression. I couldn’t articulate what had happened, and depression wasn’t spoken about then. If you were depressed people would laugh in them days. Your friends certainly would. So I just tried to pretend nothing was wrong and I would get drunk to cover it up.

  I became an ACHIEVER. I went on courses and qualifications to improve my career, and I kept climbing the ladder and surpassing my expectations. I carried on partying as well. I was in that age bracket where everyone was out every weekend, but I would take it too far. I was the party animal. The one everyone spoke about the next day for good and bad reasons. I would continue this lifestyle for years smashing it at work and self- sabotaging at the weekend. I spent a lifetime trying to get people to love me on the dancefloor but deep down I didn’t love myself.

  I continued this way until 2009. I had got fitter a couple of years earlier by becoming a gym freak, and I tone down the partying a little, but by 2009 I had hit a professional crossroads. Something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel like I was progressing anymore. When I got my job as a learning mentor in 2003, it was all I ever wanted. The pay was great and a big increase in my previous employment. It was 10 minutes from my home, and I knew a lot of the school community because it was the nearest school to my house when I was growing up. What more could I ask for? I was in heaven.

  But by 2009, I had overachieved in the role and had created a legacy in the school. I needed a new challenge, as my position could not go any further. I was at the peak. And I was being worked like a dog. Too many hours. Too much paperwork and not enough appreciation. I considered doing a Psychology degree, as I am passionate about Psychology. Still, I didn’t fancy spending four years studying and going through broken pay and instability as I had seen a friend going through a career change and it looked very difficult and compromising. After talking to mentors and professionals, I decided to do a leadership qualification through the school. This renewed my passion for the role, and I grew in stature and knowledge from education. I was more confident as I was now an official leader. I took on or created new challenges and improved on the success’ I already had. I was happy for a while, and I worked with a great team, but slowly I became restless. I didn’t receive a pay rise as promised when I got my leadership qualification. The tories came into power, and we were made to believe we were lucky to still have our jobs never mind a pay rise. I could see this was true because some mentors I knew in other schools were made redundant. So as I had been throughout my working career, I stepped up the fear feeling I always had and was grateful to have a job. The management used to make us live in fear, so I didn’t have the confidence to think about doing anything else.

  In 2012 I had had enough. On a personal level, anyway. It was the 2012 Olympics, and I just had another crazy night of partying. But when I woke up, I just felt lonely inside. I noticed that unless I put in all the hard craft, I didn’t have any friends that were bothered. Not for the many millions I had. I remember thinking that I was worried about a girl I was seeing and she wasn’t the best looking and even though I liked her I kept her at arm’s length because of what other people might say. But I remember this one morning thinking to myself when I close the door no one is in my life, so why am I worried what they think they are not there when I wake up, and they are not there when I sleep, so why am I caring what others think. This was a watershed moment for me because I had always been a people pleaser before. It was dawning on me that people were not there for me like I was believing. When the music stops, you see who is still with you. I decided I wanted to clean up my act. I was fed up of getting high and sleeping with girls I didn’t fancy unless I was wasted. I went to the doctors and said I was fed up of having depressive bouts. He tried to give me medication, but I refused, so he sent me to a therapist. This therapist introduced me to meditation, and that’s when my life changed.

  In 2013 I was slowly incorporating meditation, and the landscape was changing on the work front. The boss who I had a lot of respect left and the school was a different place from 2009. The staff were not as nice, and the teaching crisis was starting to set in. The new head lost control, and the children were running wild. The school became a furnace of stress. But I was going the other way. I was getting more assertive through the mediation and a parenting course the school had sent me on. I was now more powerful than ever, and the role was too small now. The school were happy for me to stay in my lane and not promote me in any way. I had more responsibility I was virtually on the management team.

  I knew I needed to leave. I came across the life coaching directory ad on the internet one night towards the end of 2013. Something about it was drawing me in. I decided I would go on the open day in Feb 2014. Around the same time I saw the advert I remember walking home from the shops one evening and I was talking to a friend and saying to her that I was going to start my own business and work for myself. I had outgrown my role in the school, and I was aware that they needed me more than I needed them. I wasn’t happy in school.

  My decision was cemented when the headteacher went completely ballistic at me when I had done her a favour. She was known for screaming at staff, but I had been discovering personal development and I was reading Stephen covey 7 habits of highly effective people so I used all I was learning from him such as seek first to understand so you can be understood. I was upset all weekend with her actions and decided I was going to leave once and for all.

  I went to the coaching academy open weekend, and I was sold straight away. Just like with youthwork, I got it straight away, and the other attendees were saying I was a natural. On this weekend I met a lady who told me about the secret, and that was my introduction to the laws of attraction. I now had a new life path involving meditation, life coaching and the universe. I had never felt so good in my life. I was finally happy with myself.

  I started and completed my coaching diploma but the more the course went on, the more I lost friends and colleagues as I stopped being a pushover and became more confident in myself, By the time I completed the diploma my role at the school had become impossible. Most of the staff were unhappy. I was unhappy with the lack of integrity, leadership and manners. Workplace bullying was now rife, and I was a victim of it. I had to get out, but I didn’t want to go to another school I knew it was the same. I decided I wanted to life coach and mentor, and with mentoring, I would cut out the middle man.

  I had a really difficult time when I came to leave. Hardly anyone was talking to me because I took on the staff on behalf of the parents and the management threw me under a bus at a staff meeting. I had to go off on sick leave. The doctor said the environment stressed me, and it was clear I was not stressed when I was not there. It was difficult, and it wasn’t the usual way to leave the matrix, but the prize at the end has been worth it.

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