 Hi, I'm Jacque Kermae, I'm a British Jordanian life coach based here in London. My life mission is to empower those who are broken by the world. But the second aspect to trauma is the meaning we create about ourselves, about people and about life in general. He was trying to kill my friend basically or at least really beat him up. And after they pray they blow candles out and they have sex together. Khaled, how are you brother? I'm good, how are you Chris? Yes, practicing my Arabic I'm guessing. You're getting there, you're getting there. Yes, Jordan, incredibly fascinating country but beautiful desert and of course the home to the ruins at Petra. Which a lot of people will be familiar with. One of the seven world wonders. Yes, and they featured in a James Bond film I seem to remember. Yes, they featured in a few but one of the ones that stand out, yes, James Bond. Yes, and when was the last time you were in Jordan? That would be about 11 years ago. Oh, quite some time. Yes, I needed space from Jordan, I needed to kind of overcome a few things relating to what happened in my country and my past. And space was doing me really well. This year though I am planning to go back and face some music and just face some of the old demons that used to harm me. Yes, can we talk about those and then we'll come on and focus a bit more on the coaching aspect because I'm sure that's going to help a lot of our friends at home. Of course, Chris. Because when I was reading your LinkedIn profile it seemed quite traumatic your childhood at times. There was some, yes, there was some serious stuff in there that I would have preferred for them not to happen. But life sometimes just brings you surprises. I think, let me, let me, I'm being a bit more kind of generic and more vague. I want to kind of sink deeper and really be a bit more authentic. So let me check my body here. Okay, so I believe, Chris, that we all have pains. We all suffer pains in our life and the pains happen as a result of either pain or ignorance or both. And looking back at my life, this was really my story. People who were in pain and ignorant caused me a lot of pain as a result. And, but out of that Khaled was born, not Khaled, just a name, the, the small kid, but Khaled who I am today was born, who's really determined to combat pain and ignorance, like trauma and the ignorance surrounding trauma and get the world in a better place. Yes, I heard a wonderful expression the other day and I really loved it. I have to try and remember it. It's something like after the fire, we will rebuild from the ashes. Yeah, it was beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I guess it means we're not going to develop in life unless we have challenges, I suppose. A lot of people say that for sure. We, we, when these challenges come, how they come, how are their packages up to sometimes partly up to us. I feel like when we are children where we are young, we have no choice with what's thrown at us. But then sometimes adulthood comes and now we can sometimes not always have a choice to undertake challenges. And certain lessons and enact them in our lives before they become a serious problem. And some, you know, sometimes we, we go to the words that was comfortable, was comfortable, was comfortable. And then we have explosions in our lives, right? But for children, it's, they don't really have that choice. They're not really as developed. I'm afraid. Yes. I think I talk a lot about military PTSD or let's just call it trauma. And I often am explaining to people that the differences with adult trauma is you have an adult mind. You can make sense of things that it might be unpleasant at the time, but you have the ability to rationalize and compartmentalize and put things into perspective and then then move on from them. Whereas when you're a young child, you don't have these facilities because your brain is undeveloped and your thinking is undeveloped. And yeah, I think very young childhood trauma, your body tends to store it away because it simply can't make sense of it. This creates a very powerful neural pathway for later on in life where it's almost as if there's some things it's impossible to erase. It's only possible to come up with strategies to help you to sort of help you cope with it because it's so deep down in embedded in your brain. That's a deep insight, Chris. I think there's a duality to a lot of things, including trauma. In some ways, this is really the definition of trauma for childhood is that children, you're right. They are underdeveloped. They are inexperienced. They are small. They are afraid. They are weak and they don't have any way to make sense of what's happening. And that can work on both ways. On one hand, it can be a detriment so they suppress the trauma, but also children have an amazing ability to get over things really quickly. So even in our loving interactions at home, there are many traumas that happen and children can get over them really, really powerfully. What happens with adults? Now, this is again the duality coming. If we programmed ourselves as children to suppress, then as adults, we still suppress. If we don't use the ability to make things, we just go for what's easier, which is suppression. And that is a problem because there's an author of a book. I can't remember the author, but the body keeps a score in which he really specifically focuses on how our subconscious mind stores data in our body, in our organs, in different parts of our body. And the more it can only take so much and as we keep just suppressing painful things because it's too painful for us to feel them, then that's where a lot of people get illnesses, get different aches in their bodies. The body does keep the score and that's where there's a theory that a lot of the diseases and the illnesses that we get today are actually a result of our suppression of emotional trauma that is not being allowed to escape. Yes, and can we, to give our friends at home an idea, can you tell us a few of your experiences as a child? You don't have to go into too much detail, but just so we know what we're talking about. At the moment, I'm writing a book and the working title right now for the book is Little Ninja because I really clearly remember a time when I was about eight and I was running across a field near our home. And I just, my hands were back like, you know, I was watching these cartoons where people put their hands in the back and just put their hands in the back and run so fast and jump high on buildings and that was my dream in life. It was my dream because, you know, you could just run with the wind so fast. And that was so much pleasure and joy in it. There's so much liveliness in it. There's also power. I wanted to protect the people I love. And with that, of course, comes the aspect of love itself, to love and be loved. And these are the values that really define my life. But early on, I've had my parents divorced and in a culture that is really, really mean. It's really like many cultures, it doesn't really, isn't forgiving towards women in a divorce context. It's sad because my father was incredibly abusive towards my mother. He's physically abusive, verbally abusive, emotional abusive. He, at some point, he got into, you know, alcohol and gambling. And when my mother finally mastered the strength to get away from that so she can kind of protect us and protect herself and really live. The culture turned on her and said, you are divorced. You are a loose woman. So it started really early with bullying in neighborhoods. All of a sudden, my father left, he immigrated to Australia and my mother, my brother and I were left alone. And all of a sudden, the safety was gone. Everything was new. And all of a sudden, just going to school, which was literally five minutes walk, was really painful because we'd get so many kids attack us. We were the children of the divorced woman. At some point, my father returned and he started to attack my mother again because he wanted her back and she refused and he did not like no for an answer. So she married the first guy that came in her way so that he can provide her protection. But this guy was incredibly abusive himself in a different way. We ended up being kicked out of the house literally the second day to the marriage and we were sent to our father. And it just sometimes, I think, when I think of trauma, the duality to trauma is one of the physiological responses that we get. For example, with the AZ that you mentioned earlier, the brain chemistry goes into a traumatized state and gets stuck there. But the second aspect to trauma is the meaning we create about ourselves, about people and about life in general as a result of that trauma. And that is the most painful by far because then this becomes a feedback loop with the physicochemical aspect of our trauma and they feed each other. A brain that is full of stress hormones is not going to see the world in a beautiful way and vice versa. A person who's looking at the world in a terrified way, a people in a stressful way. I remember how I get the pains in my body whenever I hung out with my people. I'd be laughing and talking but I'd go and there's tension all over my back because my brain was like people are dangerous. My father started okay. He was like, okay, he's going to shape up. But then he wanted to marry someone so that my brother and I would be taken care of. And again, sometimes when I've moved to the West and UK, it's fascinating for me to see that people talk about their step-parents, their parents and they love them so much. So many people here have step-parents and their step-parents were amazing. This is so rare in my culture, at least in my perception. I'm sure there are many amazing people there but I've not met many step-parents who are amazing. So my stepmother, especially as soon as she got pregnant, my brother and I were the threat. So she turned on us, she turned our father on us and my father has an explosive pain in his past. And that comes out in rage and he just goes and beats and hits and throws things. And when he threw that on us, it became really tough. The biggest pain I think was I am, as you can see for our friends at home, I'm a bit fair. I don't look Arab. I'm not the typical Arab. I'm not tan, I'm not dark skinned. I'm not, you know, so a lot of Arabs look at me as if I'm of a different race. And for people who understand a bit about the conflict between the Middle East and the West, the historical conflict, there is some animosity there, especially when you talk about religious animosity, right? And I was looked at as the enemy from the West. I was the weakling from the West that looked like those weak Westerners. And I was bullied a lot. Anyone who wanted to go and prove himself in the hood, he would just go and attack. He would just go and so at some point I had to like also learn how to fight for myself against a horde of one after another kid after another teenager after another who wanted to fight to prove himself. So these collections kind of made me a pariah in my culture, the kind of an outcast, wherever I went. The son of a divorced woman, the fair kid who is probably weak because he has blonde hair and bluish greenish eyes and his father beats him up. That means he's he's a no one. It just all these collections of things made me take away out of the culture and that started a new chapter that was definitely unpleasant as well. In my life. That started a new chapter. Do you mean these things that are that are going on? This was a significant period of your life. Would you mean something else happened then? Something else happened. So here's a funny story. I kind of give away it's going to be in the book, but I'll give it away now. I was in eighth grade. So nearly 15. And our Islamic teacher comes and says those Christians, they go to church. They pray. And after they pray, they blow candles out and they have sex together. And for those who aren't aware of the Jordanian culture, Jordan or the Arab culture in general, it's very gender segregated. So men and women aren't allowed to interact with each other. It doesn't mean that we never interact with women ever, but really only women in the family. So mother, sisters, sometimes cousins, especially at certain ages and from a distance there on. So at that point for a kid who is full of hormones, really horny like hell, that kind of piece of news just stuck home. And there was a church literally five minutes walk from my house in the other direction. So the school, my house, the church. And I was like, oh my God, finally I found a solution where I can kind of experience what women are and explore my body, my sexuality with women. And my hope was I would go there. There'll be some extra women and the men because look, this is the Arab mentality at the time. Men would say, hey, we have too many women, come help us. And I would go and join in. But instead I went to a church and I found out that God loves everyone. Now a disclaimer, I'm not Christian anymore. I wouldn't call myself Christian. I'm very much spiritual. I love God, but I just don't want to put labels on my relationship with my creator anymore. But at that time what was right to me at that point in my life is that I wanted to believe in a God that loved everyone, including women, including divorce women, including fair children, including those who were not born Muslim, including those who were not born Christian, who loved everyone. That seemed so right to me. But in my culture, if you do this, then in the religion, in Islamic religion, then it's a death penalty. You're given three days to voluntarily come back into your senses. And if you don't voluntarily come to it, then you get beheaded. And as a result, I had that kind of started five attempts. Before then, I was sharing a bit of traumas about my family, this functional family. I had two attempts of my life, one from my father, one from my stepfather. But after that decision, I had about five. My mother had three times tried to kill me. She hired some people and that started a whole new host of problems and trauma that took me really a long time to come to sense, to grips with. Especially when my mother passed away and we haven't really worked things out, then I was left with a lot of mess to sort out by myself. And that was definitely a curveball by life, definitely. Yes. What was the closest then that did you ever get that feeling that I'm going to say you knew you were going to die? It's a certain kind of feeling. It's very cold, incredibly chilling. And then it kind of pans out into a huge feeling of relaxation if that if this doesn't sound too crazy. Not at all. Not at all. I remember two times specifically getting this feeling out of them. One was when my mother got hired people and she did it out of love. Bless her soul. She hired eight people to get demons out of me that made me leave the conventional faith that made me love God in a different way to what was acceptable. Or love Allah in a way that was acceptable. So these guys, the way to get demons out, they would put me down and they would step on my neck and starve me with oxygen until I pass out. And then they beat me up to get the demons out. I don't want to go too graphic. Physically, I got out okay, like my throat hurt like hell, but it definitely was this close to death. It felt like and it just there was no escape. The second time it was in a car accident in a way. And I remember again in Jordan, I remember being stuck under a car that was going downhill and I thought this car is not stopping. It knows it hits me. It's hit me a few minutes ago. I'm still holding on and it's going downhill and there's a rock right behind me. So I'm either going to be run under or hit the rock. So in my mind, this was another attempt at my life because why else would the car not stop? And just as the car gets close to the rock and it let go and then the car just stops. So I was pulled out of I was like just before it. I was like, you bastards, you cowards. And I was like, is this how I spend my life last minute, last seconds. And then a second, I just thought of my kids, my two kids. And I was like, okay, I love you kids. I will see you in the afterlife and then let go. The car stopped. I was pulled out of the car. I was waiting suit to go to work and it was a bit tattered. And it was an old man who had a heart attack as he was starting the car down a hill. So it hit me and he kept trying to stop it, but he was he was really struggling. And the gentleman who is next to him, he didn't really know how to drive. Just got the sense in the end that maybe if he didn't pull the sleeve or handbrake, then that will stop it. But for someone who has had all these incidents before, it's really seemed like another attempt at my life. So yes, I know that feeling very, very well. I know that feeling very, very well. Yes, in our culture, I'm not sure how much people understand about the Middle East or Islam. And obviously it's a very vast subject in itself. I drove to India once from Norway, drove to India and back. And I also worked in Mozambique, which is a Muslim country. And yeah, it really brings home to you some kind of difference is what I'm trying to say. And I mean, I'll just give you a few examples because we have some, let's just say, as I'm sure you know, we have issues come up in the UK with our Muslim population. And I'm not here to make sort of, you know, judgment on that. But I do wonder how many people kind of have an understanding of it. And I'm guessing probably not because through my travel experience, I had situations. For example, in Pakistan, my friend saw the wife walking behind the husband, you know, walking like 10 meters behind as is the culture. And he thought, wow, what a great photograph this would make. And as he pulled the camera up, this guy just saw red. And he made a beeline for our bus. And he tried to, he was trying to kill my friend, basically, or at least really beat him up. Unfortunately, we had some local guys that we'd met in, I don't know if it's Quetta or some such place. And they were able to go, oh, and they, you know, they kind of got the difference. If you know what I mean, they were like a sort of buffer. And that was fascinating. Another time we were in these guys house and it had a sort of courtyard in the middle of the house. So you could look up and see the sky. One of the guys pulled his pistol out and said, here, Chris, do you want to shoot my gun? So I said, oh, thank you. And I fired this rat round off, not for anyone listening. It's not a clever thing to do because rounds that go up, they've got to come back down at some point. And he just looked at me and went, yes, I shot my wife with this one. And I said, oh, okay. What did she do then? He said, oh, she wanted to leave me. I'm laughing. Sorry, I'm not making light of it. It was just, and then I had a, I lived in Sweden for quite some time. And my girlfriend at the time went to university and Sweden obviously are well known for welcoming a lot of asylum seekers. And so there's a significant population there from Kurdistan and et cetera, et cetera. And one girl, her name was Fadima and she was from a Muslim family of asylum seekers and she'd started to see a Swedish guy because she'd grown up in that culture. She'd probably been there since she was five or six and she wanted to be Swedish as you would. And her father said, no, I forbid you to see this guy. It's going to be an arranged marriage. You're going to marry a Muslim guy. And when she said no, he shot her through the face. This is his own daughter. And then of course, there's other situations like one time in the desert, I had my shirt off, which is something as an English guy you don't think twice of. In fact, as soon as the sun comes out, it's generally, right, shirt off, let's get a bit of a tan. And people would come up to you and say, sir, sir, no, no, no, no, no. Put your shirt back on, put your shirt back. And it was a bit bizarre. I mean, I kind of get it. I understand it now, but at the time it's like, what do you mean you're telling me what I can't take my shirt off? And so these aspects. Oh, I mean, there was other, other situations. For example, one time we parked our bus, we were driving a bus at the side of the road. And there was a commotion in a field. We could hear music. So myself and the other driver, we started to make our way into this field. And they seemed to be gathered around something. And the music was playing and we kind of pushed our way to the front of the queue. And there was about 200 men. All dancing around what we were called lady boys. So young men dressed dressed as women dancing sort of provocatively. And these 200 men, this was their thing. This was their, you can say titillation. And as we turned to make our way back through the crowd, we started to get groped. So I'm getting my ass felt and some kid that looked about, I don't know, 13 or grabbing my balls. And it started to get a wee bit, you know, bordering on frightening is what I'm so alarming. Alarming at least. And so I was up. This was in the millennial year or it might have been 2001. When I see here now the situation in the UK, we have these. I don't want to say the word, but these they're referred to in the media as Muslim gangs that pray on vulnerable young women. We've had that situation in Plymouth where I worked as a substance misuse specialist for three years. So essentially a drug worker. And I mean, just just one situation was one of our clients was a teenage girl. She had learning disability. So she wasn't as in control of her life as maybe an ordinary teenager would. And she was getting abused by this gang. Yeah, and I'm not I'm not here trying to bad mouth any culture or stereotype anyone or brand everyone would have said no, no, not at all. I'm just trying to highlight how I get it. I've been in a culture where the women thing is just so taboo. Yes, yeah. One last story for what it's worth. We were we met some Iranian chaps that were living in Turkey, I believe. I think we hitchhiked into Iran to see to go to their family home. And at one point the father called me to one side took me into a bedroom. Open this drawer and in it were some like what we call beauty magazines, you know, women's magazines or something like this. Or it might even have been a page he'd ripped from a paper or something and he opened it. And one of the women featured in this publication had a skirt on and she just like moved her leg and you could see her underwear. And this guy's like nudging me going. He just was to him this was like gold. Yeah. And so I guess what I'm saying Khaled is I feel your pain. I can I can see it must have been. Thank you, Chris. And from what you say, I think it's really illustrates something that very, very profoundly. Thank you for sharing these stories. It's about the you're right. I know you're not singling out any groups out there and certainly not Muslims or not Arabs and definitely like I think every group we humans we sometimes can be capable of so much good and so much beauty. But we can also be capable of so much pain. We if you look at every group, every race, every religion, there's some people who are good and some people who are bad and I think what I'm be looking at is what I would call the collective trauma aspect. So it's that that aspect where if we look at the man who told you he shot his wife, such a cowardly thing to do such a terrible thing to do. It's we can look at this incident and a lot of cultures would judge that person on their own. But the fact is that they are part of a culture and culture in itself perpetrates that trauma is that that crime. And then the person becomes a scapegoat in our criminal justice systems. It's a culture that says to that man, if you don't shoot that woman, you are a wuss. You are a lady boy like the lady boys that you say you're weak, you're dishonorable. And the funny thing is not funny how it's a peculiar thing is that if that man becomes branded as dishonorable and the wuss in that culture, he'd be segregated by not only men but also women in that culture. So here's again the picture if he doesn't hurt his wife because she wants to leave him, he'd be branded a wuss and women in that culture would shame him as well as a wuss. There is a culture that perpetrates the collective trauma they have a trade. You either do what we want and we will love you or you go against it and we will hurt you. And it's not when my mother did what she did, it wasn't it wasn't purely that she just out of nowhere we were living on an island and she thought, you know what, I'm going to kill my son if he doesn't do what I believe in what I believe. She was part of a collection of culture where men and women were telling her you do this or else you yourself will go to hell and you will damn the whole culture to hell. Where is it going to stop? Are you going to let him go to hell without doing anything? It's really sad and I just I'm kind of in the middle of reading Khaled Hussaini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, A Thousand Splendid Suns. And I just want to kind of share this because I don't want to have any group, especially men, demonized as they often are in our society today. And like a lot of men are pointed at with an accusatory finger that they are the ones that cause all of this to happen. But if you read A Thousand Splendid Suns which shows a collection of some real life stories mixed with some fiction, a lot of women as well in the cultural trauma context, they perpetuate the trauma as well as men. There is an equality between men and women and there's no question about it. And the main reason I left my original faith and I went exploring is because I was born in a faith that said a man, myself, has has doubled the size brain than a woman. It was in a culture that said my mother who was being abused does not have the right to leave my father the abuser. It was a culture that said if there's any testimony before a court of law, there has to be three women to overcome the testimony of one man because two women would then be equal, one against one. Because they're half, right? They get half of the, what's the word, if someone dies and they get half of the, what's the word, the inheritance as a man. So I don't believe, I really believe in equality and I really believe that we are equal. And if we live in a shitty situation today in our world in certain places, we're equally responsible. So this is the trade that happens. I grew up in a, where I pointed about the, some of the abuse that happened with my father. But it was his, his wife in the background saying, if you want to be a man, then you have to make me happy and protect me. And by hurting your son, it was a lot of these, the silent power of cultures and the collective trauma is really powerful. And I feel like, yeah, I'm kind of getting off track here. It's something I'm passionate about and I just didn't want, because a lot of times when we see evil happening in different contexts and cultures, we see men at the forefront. And that is no denial about it. But I also want to say that cultural trauma is perpetrated by men and women, even though we only see one gender on the front and one in the back saying, whispering, saying, if you want to be men enough to ever deserve my, my approval as a woman, then you need to do these acts as well. Yes. A couple of things I was going to say there, one is obviously if I'd grown up in that culture, I, I could be this man, couldn't I? It's, and also even in Western culture, we have quite a big thing here where women, albeit unintentionally, do, they do support their own, discrimination. Yeah, in some ways, sometimes, yes, for sure. It's, it's hard to generalize whenever we talk about gender. It's as soon as, and it's very sensitive. And today there's a lot of abuse from men and towards women and from women towards men. And one of the, one of the abuses from men historically towards women is to silence them. And we are seeing as, as some women gain their power and use it in an amazing way and they balance some of the shit that men did historically. But sadly, some women, some other women use it in an abusive way and silenced men. They were just want to silence us completely. And I've had, I've had an ex friend now, she isn't friend anymore, who said women have no right, men have no right to speak anymore, because we've spoken for so much historically that now only women can speak and we should shut the fuck up really. But I just want to comment back on what you said. I've met many people in my culture and many cultures as well. I've traveled over 34 countries so far, not as many as yourself probably, but it's for, for a Jordanian that really started a bit late. I am really proud of it and just got to really meet so many people and so many cultures. And I want to say that I don't know that if you were born in that culture that that means you would be one of them. Today, my father doesn't speak to me. It's one of the most painful things is for a man to have his father say, I'm not approving of you as a human or as a son. So in my culture, people are called Abu, which means father of, then the first born son. So if you were the first born son, your father in my culture would be called Abu Chris. My father was called Abu Khaled because I'm the eldest in my family, but he changed to Abu Laith, which is one of my brothers. He's completely disowned me out of the family. And that was a choice made not necessarily by him, but from a lot of pressure from his wife and some of the women in the family that he had to do this. And what I was trying to say is that there was a, the way I made peace with this is that if I was my own father, I have two boys. I'm really, really incredibly proud of them. And if evil of them, this is not, I'm not trying to like praise myself, but this was kind of came out of years and years of healing and trying to make peace with it. Where in one point, because I was rejected out of my culture and beaten and there was a time where I was tortured in prison and I was given up to torture by my own mother and brother. And in that time, I really made the meaning about myself that I was worthless. I was totally worthless. In fact, in my first session of therapy ever, I just bawled and cried and I just said to the therapist, I feel I'm despicable. That's who I am. And going back a little bit, if I was my own father, I'd be so fucking proud of myself. Because I am, this is a child now talking, looking at myself from a father's point of view. This is a child that literally lost everything and everyone. I had best friends say, we don't want to be your friends anymore. I had so many people say we don't want you in our house. We don't want to be in touch with you. We don't want our daughters to marry. We don't want anything to do with you, including my own family, which is what hurt really the most. But nevertheless, whether rightly or wrongly doesn't matter. At that point, Khaled, the teenager believed that the only way to really be authentic in life, to be true to himself and to the creator that made him, was to follow a creator that loved everyone equally. And he stood up over and again and over and again against everyone that told him, you're wrong. You're shit. We're going to kill you. We're going to hurt you and stood up. And today, if my son does whatever he wants, even something I totally disagree with, but I will respect the man in him, the human in him that decides to stand up for what is right. And to connect this with the collective trauma concept, where a culture says, if you don't follow, we will hurt you. We will stop loving you. I believe people have a choice. It is a lot of people are afraid to believe in themselves. This we see it on a big scale in terms of faith, in terms of changing your way of life. But even today as a life coach, when I want to see when I work with my clients and they want to heal over over pain, or they want to build a dream. So there aren't good places, but they want to go into something better. There's fear, fear of loss, fear of what what would society think of me if I take chances on myself. And I think this is a big, big missing point that we live in cultures that don't teach us to believe in ourselves. They teach us to follow the rat race, to do what's good for governments, for groups, for people of power, but not really for the soul that lives with them. Exactly. You summed it up really, really well, Khaled. Well done. Yes, I will get there. Yeah, I'm very much the same. I like to make people aware that if you seek your identity in you, you're going to get upset. You're going to attach stuff to human relationships, which, yeah, of course, obviously it's a factor. But overall, we're part of this beautiful universe and we're all born perfect. We should all experience unlimited love because that's what universe is. If we're all a part of the universe, there's no point hating on each other because you're me and I'm you in this great, great experiment. But of course, we've been indoctrinated from children to not understand this higher power. And to quite a degree, we've been subverted from it through religion to think that if we go in this building and we do this, then that's how we find God. And when you realize that, no, it's within us and we're loved from birth, then you don't have to seek your acceptance in other people. And it's a beautiful place to be because it's the answer to so many of our worries. Absolutely. Absolutely. And this journey is not overnight. When we are taught for years and sometimes decades that we need to live in ego and then need to live as batteries for others to benefit from. It's so hard to switch overnight. But it is definitely, and this is coming from a guy who lost literally everything many times over trying to live that journey. It's definitely the most worthy journey ever. It's worthy. It's worthy. It's worthy. Today, when I sit and I look under the stars, I'm connected with the world in so much more than I would have been had I still connected with the people that wanted that trade, that conditional love trade. I've already felt like I would have been so connected so many people, but yet in prison. In fact, I was in prison in Jordan and I was told, if you don't get back to the faith, then you are going to be sent to prison from four to seven years. So if you get back, you go free tomorrow. If you don't, we're going to send you to a religious court and you're going to be sent for four to seven years into prison. And that night, I was put in a prison cell with four other people. One guy was a thief or robber. One guy, I think maybe he has a pedophile, but we don't know because he wasn't really saying what he did. One guy I remember in particular, he was there for murder. And because he was beaten so bad or what is what he said, maybe I don't know. But because he was beaten so bad, what he did is that he cut himself from head to toe with a piece of glass. And then his body was just had all these wounds and the pus on it, it just smelled like hell. So at night, we're sleeping in really a space that is like two meters by three meters, like a small bathroom. On the floor, there's nothing on the floor. And kind of buildings crunched up to make space so we could sleep. And a stench of that guy was near to me, walking up so many times at night. And every time I woke up, this voice would tell me, look, you have a choice. You could really just do what they want and you go free. And I was like thinking to myself, no, I'd prefer to live authentic to myself in a prison than live a slave to someone else's way of life in a castle. And in the morning, I said, no. And some people interfered. I know some people in the Congress in the American Congress interfered. There was a lot of uproar and I was sent home, thankfully. But I was, that was, and in fact, I remember the police officer told me to sign some things. And I said, I'm not going to sign it unless you said that I refuse to do what you want. And he slapped me a couple of times. And when he saw that the 17-year-old kid is not going to budge, then he said to his assistant, write to what he wants. He wrote it and sent me home. And that was a victory. I didn't see that at the time. But that was a victory. When you go follow your heart and follow your soul, there's a lot of rewards. There's a lot of, the amount of amazing people that came to my life were just incredible, just incredible. And here I am today. So there is a huge reward. And, you know, Chris, you're in the West, you're in Plymouth, you are in the UK where, and we know there's a lot of anti-spiritualist movement in the West, as well as many other parts of the world. And it's not easy today to say what you say. It's not easy to stand up for love today. A lot of people say, well, what the heck are you talking about? So well done. Like we are all fighting our own battles in our own ways and our own corners. And I'm grateful that you are doing your bit as well. Oh, that's so kind. You say, thank you. And vice versa, I should say. Thank you. So I don't believe that if you ever were born in that culture, you would be the same. I just don't believe that. Yeah, I'm, I just try not to appear judgmental because I've, I've, I've done lots of stupid things in my life. Oh, we all have. Oh my God, we all have. Let's say that's the trauma, isn't it? Trauma makes you perpetuate trauma. Yeah. Until you hear from it. The difference is probably with is like I don't focus on the past. I look back with fondness at what I've learned and my experiences, but literally I, I, I cut, I cut the past off with, with a rate is I live in the present. I live in the, you know, in the shadow of love or the light of love, I should say, and, and it's great. It's, it's no need to live in the past. I really serve much of a purpose except to learn to learn from it. How, how was it coming to the UK? Can you tell us about that experience? It was nothing really dramatic. I, I met a British lady back in Jordan and we fell in love. I didn't call it really. We fell in love. I was kind of kind of a missionary at that point. So I was an orthodox Christian at that time in my life. And just we went on a date. This was the first date I've ever been on. And she invited me back to her place and we danced and she kissed me. And because she kissed me in my mind, oh my God, we became boyfriend and girlfriend. And now because we are boyfriend and girlfriend and because I'm a holy man, I want to be a holy man. I must marry this woman and I must make it work. So within seven months we were married. That was the first time we came here for a wedding and honeymoon and went back to live in Jordan. And then after a few months, she just had enough of Jordan and really wanted to, to come here. So we talked a little bit about it. I was kind of afraid but kind of excited. But really it worked really easily. I got a visa. They've asked me for some papers. They've asked me to, I've worked hard to apply for some universities, prove myself, prove my language skills. I was accepted by a few. So that kind of was like a big push for my visa as well. And her family was really kind. They were like, look, if this guy doesn't become productive, we'll take care of him. So yeah, this is the way I came here. And so it wasn't really anything dramatic, I'd say. And how did your life coaching journey start? How did you come across Tony Robbins? So Tony Robbins, I came across him in a TED talk. I was hearing from, we talked about trauma and the echoes of trauma and my view sometimes are worse than trauma itself. Because of the meaning we create again about ourselves and about life and about people. I was in my, my version of my trauma. I was after people that would treat me, that would abandon me, that would abuse me the same way I was abused by my family. So when my mother wanted to bring me back, it wasn't that she just had people to hurt me, or she herself, once with a knife, once with a belt, tried to fix me. Yeah, quote unquote. But it was all the emotional abuse in between that was just terrible. She was just the mother that stood up, that loved me to death, that when my father left and took everything, we literally had nothing. We're living on, I think, $120 a month and $60 of those went to rent. And sometimes we didn't have pennies. She would ask, I said, you have pennies lying around so we could buy bread and eat. She worked so hard for us. And she changed so much into becoming this person that would just, she took all food out of the house at one point and I, and I was gonna starve. So I went and worked and I went and, you know, while I was 17, 16 and 17, I worked in ice cream shops and restaurants, I cleaned and did everything so I could eat. And I, of course, I failed high school as a result. But that echo of my trauma meant I was worthless and I picked people who treated me the same way I remembered my mother treated me. There's a, the founder of the School of Life, Alain de Baton. He talks about that what we think of love is that we're often after people who will love us like, oh, I love you. And that's it. But that's not true. In psychology where we're after, we're after people who love us the same way we understood love to be when we were growing up. Meaning in the good and the bad, the healthy and the torture. So my version of love was whenever I met women that were really into me after my divorce, that wasn't love. In fact, I was married for so long because I didn't feel loved by my ex-wife. She's an amazing woman. I just didn't feel loved by her. And I was getting over this really painful relationship where a woman literally broke up with me in the end saying, if you don't give me your credit card to buy whatever I want, I'm leaving you. And I was like, you know what? You've literally milked me dry and I can't do this. So she left me and it was over. So recovering from that, I was watching, I heard about Ted talks and I watched Tony Robbins. And my resolution for that year was not to cry. Because I was like, all these pains and everything I was crying right and left, especially when I was alone. And sometimes I wouldn't be able to hold it on a date or something. We'd be talking and she'd be asking me the same question my tears would fall. Like, oh my God, I'm not a man anymore. So Tony Robbins gets on stage, talks about his story. And as he talks about what made him want to help people, he cries. And I just saw this man on stage crying in front of the world. And he wasn't ashamed of it. And I just, all of a sudden, this kid that was lost trying to find his way into masculinity, into being a man, I found a role model that I could follow. A few years later, I, therapy, it works for some ways, but then I finally went to a coach. And coaches did wonders for me that therapists couldn't. Because therapists kept taking me back, look back, look back, look back. And I kept getting retraumatized by relieving traumas. But the coach asked me, what do you want? I'm like, oh, I wanted a new home and I wanted to be fit and I wanted to do my business. I wanted to run my business successfully and not be always afraid, stuck in my bed and depression and anxiety and panic attacks. It's like, okay. And he took me, she took me through some processes. And I went like, oh my God. It all of a sudden, what I wanted seemed real. It's not a fantasy, it just seemed real. I took me through a process where I just relaxed me. I meditated a little bit. Then she asked me what I wanted, why it was so important. And then she asked me to imagine it and describe it in colors and noises. And as my brains and my imagination became vividly real, my nervous system all of a sudden woke up. It's like, this exists. I want it. And I want to just say, Chris, my program is called Path to Kingdom. And the reason I called it Path to Kingdom is because all my life, I tried to find my place in this world by building metaphorical kingdoms. I made lots of money, built businesses, got degrees, traveled the world, made friends in really powerful places. But I've lost all of that because the person that I am was still the same, was afraid, was damaged, was living in ego, was putting so many masks, was selfish, was manipulative. I was trying to survive and I employed a lot of ways to survive. In my healing process, and when I saw Tony Robbins and saw this other coach and went to one of his events and just transformed my life, at one point I was doing meditation and all of a sudden I realized that what was really after in building kingdoms is again metaphorically to become a king, to become someone worthy. So I created Path to Kingdom where people, I take people who are after building their kingdoms, but instead of focusing on the external, we focus on the internal. We turn men and women into kings and queens because kings and queens can create kingdoms, not the other way around. One of my favorite quotes from my Christian days was, what do you gain if you win the world and lose yourself? What do you gain if you win the world and lose yourself? And another quote from The Wheel of Time is now being made into a series, isn't really my favorite on Prime. It's, there's a quote that says, become a king and a kingdom will follow. And we're after that, we're after being kings and queens in our lives, but we're after it by hopefully by clothes and watches and money and job titles. But the person inside we neglect, they're always last priority. We spend so much money on a gift in a Valentine's Day. We take our loved ones to amazing places and vacations and shard them with love. But then when it comes to actually buying a healthy meal, we go for the cheaper and healthy one. We go for the, you know, we save money on not paying the gym $20 a month or $30 a month. We just treat ourselves so much like shit and then expect the other people in our lives that we spend so much energy on to make us feel worthy and make us feel like kings and queens. That's where it comes from. Yes, kingdom, I like it. Yes, we are all kings of the universe. And have you met Tony? I've met Tony. I'm a platinum partner in his foundation and actually traveled the world following his events and he's invited myself and other platinum partners to his house in Sun Valley in Idaho. Incredible, incredible guy. One of a few who like look, no one is perfect, but this is one of the real life guys that I've seen is as, you know, as good as they come and he's trying his best to really guide people, change the world by example, for sure, an incredible guy. He's a guy who's made me walk on fire. I jumped from a high pole. I broke thick plies of wood. It's just inspired me to really believe in myself and transformation. I went joining not only him, but other coaches like just I've always now believe I always have a coach in my life, even though I'm a coach. I always have a coach in my life because a coach can really bring out the most powerful strings that you don't even realize are there. And the more I transform, the more I create for myself on the people I love and the more I do that, I realize even more how I need people to bring that power out more and more from within me. How was your first fire walk? Beautiful, beautiful. We had to stand in line for a long time, but it was fascinating. I remember as a kid watching a lot of people in India walk on fire, right? I like thinking, this is crazy. And then here I was doing it at the age of 37. Boom. It was powerful. It's a great experience. Yes, absolutely. I did it three times. I did it in London. I did it in Singapore. Again with Tony and I did it in Miami again with him. Yes, I like the aspect of taking action that Tony talks about, or Tony lives. I say this a lot in coaching. When we take action, when we're in a difficult situation, it just reassures us that the power is within us to take control of our lives rather than wait for something to happen or place that power on somebody else, or something else, or circumstance. And he says, I think it's at the beginning of his unleash, the power within book, how he came home and he had a repossession notice pinned to the door of his house. And his life was at an all-time low. So he kicked his shoes off and ran along the beach. Yes. And this is the friends at home. This is the taking action. And it was, I don't know, a few years later, he's flying to a seminar. He's piloting his own helicopter to a seminar and he's hovering over the building where he was a janitor before all this. In a school, yeah. He was a janitor, a nighttime janitor in a school. Yes, yes. So yes, incredible. Not cheap, though, to go on one of his courses, but then we shouldn't put money in the way of our development. No. And there is a principle. There are people who, like, against this kind of, these kind of taxes, and these are people who are for these kind of taxes, and sometimes we value the learnings, the teachings that come to us in equivalence to the investment of effort and resources that we put into receiving them in the first place. It's kind of a duality, again, is that dance. And I feel like I've certainly helped one of my high school friends was suicidal. He's been scammed out of all his money by a business partner and he just wanted to end it all. And I worked with him and I said, look, he came to me asking for money. I said, look, I'll help you out. But actually, I'll only give you this much. And after that, I'll help you out, but not with money. I will help you out. I'll coach you. I know you can't afford it. I'll do it for free. And I turned my life around. You can turn it. Anyone can turn it. So I guided him. And within a few months, he was, like, celebrating. He was, like, in a much better place. It happened very quickly. But within a few months, his financial situation turned. And we're celebrating. But in the same time, because it was free, he wasn't holding onto it like all my other clients who paid for it. My clients who paid for it, they knew they were investing in themselves. They were taking money, which is energy, and putting them into a process for them. It was an act of self-love. And a lot of people that go to coaches, funny enough, money is the least amount of investment. Because when you go to a coach, a coach can help you make much, much more than you invest with him or her. That's the idea of it. So it's really nothing. It becomes a fraction of what you do. Not to mention the amount of life force that you can unleash within yourself when you live that way. But I just want to point out of something that you mentioned earlier about Tony and about his power of action. Because I know, Chris, you told me a little bit about some of your listeners and some of them struggle with past traumas. And I just want to say that for a long time, I thought I was less than other people because I was traumatized and I was not able to take action. So it's not an automatic thing. In fact, traumas, what they do, there's amygdala part in our brains. And when we're traumatized so much, the amygdala becomes enlarged, literally becomes enlarged and becomes stronger. And amygdala does not want us to move forward because now the amygdala believes people are dangerous, future is dangerous, life is dangerous, everything is dangerous. So that's where we procrastinate, where we are afraid to do things, we're afraid to actually... because we're afraid of anything that would change our current reality. If we know where we are, even though it couldn't be shit, if we can breathe, amygdala says, okay, this is better than what I don't know out there, including success, including becoming rich, including having a happy relationship. And there's a prefrontal cortex which is responsible for our actions, for our future planning, for our dreams and imagination so that we can motivate ourselves to move. Literally, if you're traumatized, become smaller. So look, this part that makes you take action becomes smaller and the part that makes you not take action becomes stronger and bigger. And I must say that that's part of my whole coaching. It's not purely about Mr. Dalai's motivation. Come on, come on, come on. There's a lot of healing involved because not everyone can just go and take action right now. And even if we push ourselves to take action right now, it's not always easy to maintain action. There's strategies, but there's healing. In the traumas that we hold, I remember a psychologist calling it in a beautiful way, it's like radiators that have air bubbles in them. And if you have air bubbles in your system, you can't literally heat up like a regular radiator. You just can't. You must let the air out so you can function properly. And that's part of the coaching that we do today. And a lot of coaches, a good coach, would not be a coach that would only focus on tomorrow or would help you unlock the pain of yesterday, dreaming about tomorrow and living fully in today. This is the whole balance of it. Wonderful. Khaled. Chris. This has been an absolutely wonderful chat. I'm so happy to have met you for the contribution that you've already brought to my life. Thank you guys. I hope this... Well, I don't hope. I know this will be the start of a long friendship. I look forward to you teaching me how to do fireworks. Tell me a little bit about that. You learned it personally from Tony, right? Yes. Well, I learned it at one of his seminars. And later, when I was... Let's just say recovering from some of my own issues, and everyone had lost faith in me, which they do when you're showing the effects of trauma, I decided I wanted to go and work in Africa and teach street children. I just felt a need to give something back. Beautiful. And I had to pay some fees to go and study in Norway. And so I came up with the idea that I'd do a fire walk. And it's actually the first of many that I've... Or first of several, I should say that I've done. But I took myself off to the River Tamar, which is a big estuary in Plymouth. And on the banks of the estuary, I built this big fire. And then as it was getting dark, I watched the fire burn down. And then I stood there and I thought, just always got to believe in yourself. Even when... Because other people won't. And that's fine. You don't need other people's approval. You just got to believe in yourself. And now I understand that myself isn't myself. It's this bigger, much bigger picture. And yeah, I just banged my chest and I walked over that fire. And yeah, it's just symbolic, isn't it? It's symbolic that we have the power within. We're invincible and we've just got to go forward even when we don't have the support of others. And I'm guessing if I hadn't have done that on the banks of the river that night, we wouldn't be having this great chat now. Absolutely. I wouldn't have a wonderful life. Well done. Well done. I look forward to learning the techniques from you. Yes. And if people want to get hold of you for your coaching or your speaking, what's the best way to do that? So thank you for this. I have a website, path2kingdom.com. And I have, I'm on social media. I have an amazing team that helps me be present and available on social media. My handle is coach.challet. So that's K-H, my K-H-A-L-E-D. So coach.challet, you could find me on all social media just as we bumped into each other, Chris. And just I want to say for one of my ways of giving back, I'm really grateful for my journey. I'm really grateful for what the universe has given me. I know I had to lose a lot to get here, but I've also gained a lot. And I have it in my bedroom, the sign that I created about my mission in life, which is to kind of symbolically to be like the sun. Because remember when I talked about the ninja, and since I was a child, soaring with the wind. So the sun is always there soaring, soaring with joy. So my mission in life is to soar with joy, shine with compassion, and guide my soul tribe into their own miracles, because I feel like I believe that where I am today is a miracle. Where I come from and where I am today is a huge miracle. And if there's anything I can do to guide anyone into their own miracle, I would do my utmost best. That's why I studied, that's why I travel the world, that's why I spend so much, invested $150,000 in learning the techniques I share with my clients today. And anyone that needs help, please get in touch. I'll give you also Chris a link if you'd like. But there's a link on my website to reach out where they can schedule a call with me free of charge. And free of charge, I'm more than happy to just create a strategy with them on how to move from a place of being stuck in yesterday's stories, in the meanings that our past had made us create about ourselves and about lives into a totally new future. I fantasized when I was in my 30s, I had money and I had a lot of things, but I was lost. And I wished, I didn't know anything that Life Coaches existed. And I remember watching movies and I was thinking it was Hugh Jackman at the time, I think, in a movie. And I was thinking, I wish this awesome guy would just adopt someone like me, not necessarily adopt him but teach me the ways on how to really live an awesome life. How to master life, how to master relationships, how to master confidence, how to master being a man or being a woman, being a woman. How to unlock my real core energy. I had no idea these guys existed, but they do exist. And if you're listening, I am here and if I can do anything for you, I will tell you and if I can't, I will tell you and I would be more than happy to at least sit with you free of charge and create a clarity session, a strategy session. Some of the things that you could do in your life today that will help you just gain momentum and really empower your action in your life and create the kingdom that you deserve. There you go, friends. You cannot lose. So I would take this man up on his offer. Absolutely. Khaled, stay on the line. I'm going to be practicing my Khaled for the rest of the day. Stay on the line so I can thank you. Thank you properly, but for the purposes of this recording it's been absolutely wonderful chatting to you. Thank you for sharing some challenging details of your life. It's really appreciated and I massively wish you all the best going forward. Yes, thank you so much for having me here and for giving me a platform to speak and express the good and the bad that makes me who I am today. I'm really, really grateful. I'm really grateful for getting to know you a bit more. And someone like you is definitely, people like you are definitely a rare commodity on this planet. I'm really grateful to have met you. Thank you. So our friends at home, we're grateful to have you as well. Massive love to you all. Please look after each other. If you could like and subscribe, that would be wonderful. And we'll see you next time.