Intro
Searching for the meaning of my life and filling the emptiness
Inspiration for you who want to make changes and get a different result in life.
Here are scenes from my life story, which are not in my first book, my life CV, not the formal CV but what my life has taught me, which has made me a competent 1: 1 life coach with over 20,000 hours experience.
Part 1 contains:
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Scenes from my unusual life. Born death, world record holder and I don't know what limitations are.
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I am a survivor who has restarted many times.
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Discriminated, in restaurants all over the world, been homeless but strong nonetheless
- Nothing is impossible for me! I have made many restarts in my life.
I know a new life awaits outside the habituated box.
Mikael Avatar
1: 1 Life Coach, author, artist, music creator
Former world record holder Long jump (1992 - 2004). Paralympics 1996 Atlanta USA
Born dead and grew up in a dysfunctional family
I grew up in a highly dysfunctional family with alcohol, drugs, crime and long prison sentences. My stepfather was on the run from crime in Finland. In addition, there were many secrets that were carefully hidden away, to this day. I was close to being drawn into a similar life pattern, but my sports career saved me.
To this charming family, I was born dead after my drunk biological father was beating my mother's stomach where I was waiting to be born. She was in the eighth month and he hit me directly. It was a pure murder attempt. She was taken to the hospital but I was born dead.
Mom has told me that I wasn't breathing. The medical staff rushed off with me to the ICU. Left alone in the room my mother was left alone in shock, afraid, worrying and without any information about me. The emergency team could do nothing.
Probably I was without oxygen for the first 45 minutes of my life.
Mikael Avatar 5-7 år
I was laid among other stillborn children.
A nurse happened to pass and saw that I was breathing. The emergency team was activated once more. Mom talked to a doctor a few hours later and thanked him tearfully for saving her little boy.
- Don't thank me yet, said the doctor.
He knew that a child who had been without oxygen for so long was most likely unable to live a normal life. He knew that the child probably would not be able to turn in the bed himself, eat himself or talk and even less be understood and say something sensible. Just living a life in bed or at the best in a wheelchair.
Many years of piano and judo training opened my hands
I was much more disabled as a small child. I couldn't even open my hands when I was eight years old. My hands were tied with cramps and I could not open them. My body was oblique, and I walked, like Charlie Chaplin, but on the contrary, with my feet.
They were twisted inward, and I kept falling. I spoke on the inhalation with short breaths and could hardly be understood I was much more disabled as a small child. I couldn't even open my hands when I was eight years old.
Abdo, my music teacher, taught me how to humming sing tones and scales and that allowed me to start talking in a different. From age 7 to age 17, I had him as my first important life mentor. He was a well-known music creator and played at the Nobel Price Banquet 1988 in Stockholm.
I opened my closed cramping hands by starting with judo. I had to open my hands to grasp the Judo costume of the opponent.
I continued playing the piano with Abdo. When I was 17, I played gave a concert in on a grand piano in front of a large audience. I have absolute hearing, so Abdo got sad when I didn't continue with higher music studies and chose long jump in a sand pit. Twenty-five years later, I resumed the music venture when I moved to Thailand and opened my gallery. Abdo died in 2013 and never learned that I did continue with my music. Sadly, he did not hear my compositions.
My art gallery in Thailand
I do not even know what a limitation is
There is an unstoppable life force in me. There is nothing called impossible. Life, is just pouring forth.
After training for 10 years for the regular Olympics, I was told that there was something called Paralympics. Then I smiled inside me and understood that now I am near the finish line. I can do this easily. Seven years later with 15,000 hours of intense training, I was there, breaking the world record in long jump at the Atlanta Olympic Stadium in front of 68,000 supportive spectators.
I have made several restarts in my life.
Restarts are my own specialty. I have made major changes where I have left my old way of living. Here are some examples where I have let go of the old and created a whole new life.
Thrown out from the university
The first life reset occurred after I got thrown out from a technical university. Why? Because they didn’t want me with my diagnosis: cerebral palsy.
I thought if they won’t allow me to study. Will I even get a job when I have finished the studies? I was very upset and had no choice but to leave and start over.
So, I turned my focus and energy on a sports career that lasted 10 years and during these years I achieved four world records. Under the UN-flag I also sailed over the Atlantic with the first disabled crew.
Mikael Avatar at the rudder on the Atlantic in 1988
My emptiness after
world record and Paralympics
The second time I made a huge transformation in my life was when my career in sports ended. My life had been sports, 24/7. I had achieved levels that many others can only dream of. My life revolved around training and competing; there was no time for anything else.
At the airport when I landed in Sweden after the Paralympics (1996), I really imagined something amazing and different would happen to me.
I had given everything for seven years and set a world record, in front of 68 000 cheering spectators. Nothing amazing happened when I got home. It just felt empty. I had probably imagined a free ticket to the Universe with crachling stars. But my stomach just cramped and I felt as lost as before the Paralympics.
I was so sad and disappointed and felt that I only meant something to Sweden when I performed at world level. Very few understand the emptiness when an elite athlete stops being a celebrity
I became homeless
Even before the Paralympics, I had started my own company, as a public speaker. But I was still lost and wandered alone at last in the streets. I was homeless and slept in the shelters. But at the same time, I managed to keep a professional facade outward. I went from the shelter to assignments as a public speaker for management groups at multinational companies.
Sports picture of the year -96.
The final of the 100m, Paralympic Atlanta, this photo was taken and named in Best Sports Report as one of the winners.
Last picture when I left Sweden in 2009.
The pain and cramps
drove me to Thailand
The third time I hit that reset button was after I left my native country and moved to Thailand (2009). My body was bathed in pain almost constantly from the cold climate in Sweden and Thailand made me pain free. The heat eased the pain and cramps that wracked me.
In order to move to Thailand, I had to get divorced. (My wife didn't want to move with me to Thailand.) I got rid of my artist's studio and dropped a bunch of other stuff.
Time to find my own inner core
Thailand is known for being timeless.
I took the time to walk the beaches by the sea, philosophize and just be. I had no unavoidable demands, so the art, the music creation flourished again in me.
And after a while, from a greater calm, I started with my exclusive coaching*. I am rich in calmness, and time. (*More about my exclusive coach comes in upcoming chapter.)
Discriminated at restaurants all over the world
Having a CP diagnosis, I constantly encounter various discriminatory behaviors. Everything from people treating my like I am mentally retarded and treats me like such. They stare at me, avoid me and does not want to communicate with me.
A common discriminatory situation for me is when I eat at a restaurant.
Restaurants do not want me as a guest. It applies globally: Sweden, USA, Spain, England and Thailand where I live now. I have learned to deal with discrimination. I can really understand women, colored and indigenous people.
In Sweden, they thought I was under the influence of drugs so they did not let me in. In Thailand, they think I bring bad karma and do not want the restaurant to suffer from bad luck. They also say that the other guests do not want bad karma. Neither CP nor karma infects other people.
It does not end with that. If I manage to get inside the restaurant, I am approached by kind people handing me over business cards with phone numbers to persons that most certainly with make me “healthy” and “normal”. I consider it a violation of my integrity. I don’t consider myself “sick” or “normal”.
I'm here on Earth to make a difference!
Is it time for you to follow your dreams and create another life?
Wherever you are in life. Whoever you are, I can guide you wherever you want. I have helped so many to start new lives based on what I have learned in my own unusual life. They have come home to their true selves and to a meaningful sense of why they are on Earth.
For some reason you want to change something in your life, otherwise you would not have start reading my book.
Maybe it's your turn now? To follow your dreams and create another life at large or in parts.
Read the book and you will get different exercises, tips and inspirational thoughts.
“When I started my coaching with Mikael Avatar, I was a bit hesitant about him being CP.
But that image of him lasted for a maximum of 20 minutes. I let him out of my preconceived notions.
He is a loving, vibrant, creative and magical person to meet and collaborate with, and he is a super system buster.”
Johannes
Teacher Primary School
The changes you need to reach a new life won't happen overnight. It will take courage, selflove, determination, and passion but I hope that I can inspire you to take that first step that will result in you changing your life. Please don’t hesitate! You have so much to win. I promise. I have been there.
Part 1 is about:
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One of the most important steps towards another life is that you learn to observe where you are right now in life.
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My client Christine and one of her most important observations. -
How the important observation has emerged thanks to my CP.
It is your time now!
Mikael Avatar
Life coach, author, motivational speaker, artist, and musician.
Mikael Avatar
*Cerebral palsy, abbreviated CP, is a collective name for a number of muscle control disorders, such as tremors, which occur due to a brain injury before the brain is fully developed, that is, during fetal time, during birth or during the first two years of life. Cerebral palsy means paralysis through brain injury. This is the most common cause of disability in children and adolescents. Wikipedia.