Marc Singer is a professional Mindset and Energy Coach, working with people who have survived life-changing challenges and adversity, rebuild and create lives they love.
“I used to have a wonderful life. From an early age, I experienced things many people only dream of. Just last night, I was watching the tennis at Wimbledon. As the match unfolded, I found myself emotional. It reminded me of a time gone by. A time when my mum, a huge tennis fan and especially fond of John McEnroe, would take me to Wimbledon each year. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, we’d attend the tournament together at the quarter-final stage. Back then, life was good.
We lived a fairly affluent lifestyle, two holidays abroad each year to our villa in Marbella or to Orlando, Florida. I went to private school, we lived in a five-bedroom house in a lovely part of Hertfordshire, and I never really knew the true value of money. I was spoilt, to be honest. But I loved every moment of it.
The family business, high-end leather goods retail stores, was thriving. At home, I felt loved. We had two cats and a dog, and life felt good. But things began to change in my early teens. After leaving Radlett Prep, I moved on to a private secondary school in Harrow.
That’s when I first experienced bullying. Up until then, I’d always been popular and brought up to never judge a book by its cover. My parents were liberal-minded and accepting, so the concept of discrimination based on background, religion or colour was alien to me.
But this school was different. In a predominantly Asian area, as a part-Jewish white kid, I found myself in the minority. Every day, I was met with abuse, bullying and violence based on my religion, colour, and background. After six months, my parents had seen enough and pulled me out.
The only school that would accept me mid-term was in Brookmans Park. It wasn’t private like the others I’d attended, but one of my friends was there, so it seemed the logical choice.
By this time, I’d started to gain weight. I was comfort-eating at night to deal with the bullying, and so when I turned up at the new school, overweight, with a posh voice and a briefcase, I stood out immediately. Again, I became a target.
This time the bullying wasn’t about race or religion, it was about how I looked and sounded as well the background I came from. I remember begging my dad not to drop me off in his new Mercedes, knowing it would only draw more attention and make things worse.
Outside of school, my social life suffered too. Most of the friends I’d grown up with had moved on to new schools and circles, so I spent evenings either alone at home with the cats or in the leather shops after school.
Around 13 or 14, I started going to football at weekends with my grandfather. That opened the door to a new world. I began hanging around with kids from a local council estate in Watford. For the first time in a long time, I felt included. But even there, I was teased, for my Jewish roots, for being middle-class, so I decided to reinvent myself. I wanted to fit in. I started drinking, taking drugs, and acting out of character.
That desire to belong quickly drew me into the casual hooligan culture that was prevalent in the late 80s and 90s. I became addicted to the buzz. The notoriety. The sense of being someone. I built a persona. And over time, that persona became me. Much to the heartbreak of my parents, who could do little to stop it. They supported me through legal troubles, paid for lawyers, but I was too far gone.
Obsessed with my image and how my peers saw me, I didn’t care about the pain I was causing. I look back now with guilt and shame for what I put them through. It's something I’ve had to do a lot of healing around.
The truth is, I was looking for purpose. But I didn’t know that then. I thought purpose came from fitting in. I see that in society today, especially among young people, when we lack direction, we latch onto movements, causes, or scenes. We’re all searching for inclusion, validation, belonging. And often, we look for it in the wrong places.
Eventually, the way I was living caught up with me. I was in trouble with the police, in prison for football-related violence. I was working, I had money, but I still sold drugs.
Not because I had to, but because I wanted to look cool. To live up to the identity I’d created.
The real breaking point came when I was convicted of a crime I hadn’t committed. I was working in car sales and doing well. At a work Christmas party, a fight broke out. My girlfriend got caught in the middle and was attacked.
When I heard, I intervened and was badly beaten up by four men. I ended up in hospital. Despite that, I was accused of attacking them. With my previous record for fighting, the court decided I must be guilty.
I was convicted and handed an IPP sentence, an indeterminate sentence with a 6-year tariff, which meant no set release date. I could only be released when the parole board decided I was no longer a risk. It devastated my family. We appealed, but the conviction stood.
Ironically, I was sentenced on 11/11/11 at 11am, a date that, spiritually, symbolises new beginnings. And that’s what it became.
At first, I focused on completing offending behaviour courses. After a couple of years, I was doing well. But outside, things were falling apart. My mum’s health declined rapidly, and in December 2013, just two weeks after a diagnosis, she passed away from cancer on the 21st. The day before, my beloved cat, Typsy, who had been like a baby to me, also died.
I had to keep things together for my dad. He was struggling to cope. I had no siblings, so it was on me to arrange the funeral, from prison. Exactly three months to the day after my mum died, my dad also passed away suddenly, from a cardiac arrest, while I spoke to him on the phone one morning.
Not long after that, my 97-year-old grandfather died too. Just like that, I had no immediate family left. I had to sell the family home from inside prison.
I kept going by blocking it all out, the emotion, the grief, the weight of it. But eventually it caught up with me. Ten months after my mum passed, I got news that my ex-girlfriend, who I still loved, had secretly been seeing my best friend.
As far as I knew, they didn’t even know each other. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I took a drug overdose and collapsed. A fellow inmate found me and gave me CPR. The next day, I sat on my bed a completely broken man. Mentally, emotionally, physically shattered. I had no family. No release date. Nothing to live for.
And that… that was the moment it all changed.
For the first time in my life, I took full responsibility for myself, for my thoughts, feelings, and actions. I made the decision to stop being a victim of circumstance and start taking control. At first, it was small steps. Literally at that stage. I had no energy left. But I stood up. Got dressed and went to work in the DHL warehouse there.
I began studying, eventually getting a job in the education department as a classroom assistant in critical reasoning. I mentored younger lads, had some counselling and started studying psychology with the Open University.
Three years later, I was suddenly released. It came as a surprise. I hadn’t expected it, and with no family, no home, no real idea of what I was going to do, I felt lost all over again.
I had some money from the house sale which supported me in those early stages as I continued to heal and rebuild. But I didn’t want to go back to selling cars. I’d had some therapy and coaching, and thought, maybe this is something I could do?
I’d always been good with people. I understood how to get the best out of others and had demonstrated that working with others in prison. My coach encouraged me to take it seriously.
So I did. I found the best coaching school I could, the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC). One cold January morning, I picked up the phone, called them, and enrolled on gut instinct.
I had no idea what to expect. But what I learned changed - and saved - my life. They taught me a powerful methodology for conscious living. A way of thinking and being that, when practised consistently, transforms your life from the inside out.
It helped me heal my trauma. Reclaim my mind. Build emotional and spiritual clarity. Over the four years I studied with them, I grew in every area of my life. I found energetic balance. I finally found peace. And I discovered my soul purpose: to help people grow consciously. That’s it. I’ve sacrificed a lot to build what I now have internally. But I know who I am today.
And I live with the clarity that everything I went through was aligned with that higher purpose. I now help people consciously create lives they love. I help them raise their energy, align with their goals, and shift their internal world to match the life they’re trying to build externally. It’s not about solving problems. It’s about awakening. Consciousness. Authenticity.
I no longer feel the need to fit in. I prefer to live authentically, peacefully. I express myself uniquely and honestly. I believe life is about spiritual growth, not status.
Understanding. Empathy. Love. Freedom. That’s what matters. I’m truly grateful for every part of the journey. It led me here. To a life of service and love. And I can say, hand on heart: helping people rise truly is the greatest job in the world."
