It all started with a desire.

A desire to have a life of more choices and less restrictions.

However, the only path I knew back in the day was to go to university, get a job, gain experience, start your own company, start a family and live happily ever after.

In hindsight I laugh at that plan, because of my naive view of the world.

After college, I quickly started understanding the plan that I had in mind would need to be revised and adjusted, as I got more info along the way about the path ahead.

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I came to Australia, hoping for a fresh start with more opportunities, but all Australia could offer was an advanced version of the struggle with more unexpected twists in my journey.

Hence, I kept learning and revising the plan to my ultimate goal.

In this page, I would like to share with you 2 pivotal moments in my life, that was a shock to my mind and inevitably led me down a path that forced me to grow and completely overhauled the way I looked at the world.

My first experience of working with a narcissist at a workplace was the first major shock I had to my psyche.

It all started with a sweet and accommodating demeanor, i.e the love bomb phase, which lasted for about two weeks.

After we started to get to know each other, we shared the universities we graduated from and apparently much like me, she didn’t study in Australia either, so I was naturally intrigued to learn about her experiences at work in the country.

However, things took a turn for the worse, when she mentioned her university and I had inquired about the location of university, to which she took offense to the fact that I was supposed to know, because its a famous university according to her.

To which I responded, I was born and raised in Oman and I wouldn’t have any clue about some university in India.

From that day forward, all her behaviour, words, tonality and body language had an element of malevolence towards me.

At that time, I have never experienced this level animosity from someone for such a trivial matter. Hence, I didn’t have the right tools mental tools to handle that life situation.

However, I did know that I should focus my energy on what I can control and not what others do or say about me.

Hence, I focused on the job as best as I could.

The narcissistic coworker I had, was someone I was reporting to.

If you have ever worked for a narcissistic person before, you know exactly how this story is going to progress.

In a nutshell, it wasn’t good.

There were days I used to wake up at 3am to send an email I forgot to send the day before. That’s a small version of the mental pressure I was taking on.

Her instructions on tasks lacked detail, i.e lying by omission manipulation tactic. Ofcourse, I didn’t know this fact at that time.

When inquired about the details, the answers on chat apps were one word answers or if asked in person, she is either busy or reply with contempt.

Later I was let go from the role, because of a task that I had done for a client, stemming from the lack of detail in her instructions for the task.

My repeated inquiries about the task resulted only in answers without any specificity. Unfortunately, I didn’t document the communication.

Just like that, I learned my first lesson when working with a narcissist.

Towards the end of working at that workplace, I started doing a mental post-mortem of that experience as a result of which I learned about narcissism, manipulation tactics etc, which opened my eyes to the malevolent nature of these people.

However, the big mistake I did was I didn’t dive deep into this subject matter, because it felt too evil and I didn’t want to be a chronic cynic.

Instead naturally, I thought my past experience was probably a one off and says only about just this individual, and that I shouldn’t be brushing an entire group of people just because of the experience I had with just one person.

Hence, I kept my mind open and still trusting there are good people out there and I just have to find them.

Soon after this experience, I moved to another company hoping for a better experience.

However, in this company, I gained an unofficial PHD in the dark nature of humans. PHD in this context means permanent head damage lol.

Jokes aside, this company scarred me mentally, they took my soul and in return taught me a lesson I will never forget in my life.

I learned about the unconscious forces that dominate workplaces and oppress the lives of both men and women, whilst portraying an image of benevolence to the world.

If you know, you know!

In this company, I was psychologically harassed, verbally bullied, racially discriminated and I was becoming depressed with each passing day.

Then the pandemic hit us, it affected many people adversely.

For me, it was a blessing in disguise. I didn’t have to go to office and deal with the cluster b personalities at work.

During lockdown, I was able to invest alot of time to learn more about self-care without indulging in vices like alcohol or drugs, so that I could feel less depressed and be more productive for better career opportunities.

All my efforts to look for a better opportunity, only resulted in a common rejection, “Lack of local experience”, which is a euphemism for “you don’t have student debt so that we can control you by fear”, but ofcourse, I didn’t know that back then.

While working in that company, in one of the Christmas lunch we had I made a major discovery.

You see, a day before the day of Christmas lunch, I went to bed at 10pm and was only able to sleep around 2:30am. I woke up at 6am, because I wasn’t able to sleep anymore.

I was mentally stressed out. I was only 28 back then.

On the day of the Christmas lunch, I was high on caffeine to be able to function decently and I had a TON of turkey.

I enjoyed it so much such that, I just kept going.

After the lunch, some people stayed back for dancing but I took off.

To this day I don’t know how I reached home.

I recall going to bed at 6pm and waking next day at 1pm.

I was out for 19 hours. The best sleep I had ever had, all my life even till today.

I was curious, I had to figure out how I slept like that.

My research lead to the turkey I had the day before. Turns out turkey has a lot of L-tryptophan and its a precursor to producing serotonin in the brain.

Now turkey was really costly, so I opted for L-tryptophan supplements and I immediately started seeing benefits from it.

Albeit, not as profound as consuming turkey, but nonetheless decent enough to knock me out without too much alcohol or any other substances.

This discovery enabled me to handle the workplace stress better and I positive effects of that cascaded onto my workouts, my thyroid issues were getting subsided and I was becoming better every week.

After a couple of months, as I delved deep into self-development which involved reading books, I stumbled on Dr. Jordan B Peterson’s book “12 Rules for Life”.

Right at chapter 1, he talks about how serotonin affects the brain and the psychological aspect of serotonin, which illuminated my mind considering my first hand experience with “discovering” the positive effects of serotonin release in the brain.

Armed with this knowledge, experience and real life experience watching the patterns of narcissistic colleagues, I felt a high level of personal power to face the world.

I was more sharper, smarter and stronger to combat a toxic workplace. I wasn’t bulletproof, but I was most certainly progressing in that direction.

I had a deep sense of gratitude to God, higher power or the universe for giving me the fortune to discover this from my experience even though I didn’t have a mentor to reveal this to me.

Speaking of mentor, I had one. Here is what I learned for those c***s.

Around the time I was working at the workplace where I had to deal with my first narcissistic colleague, I was at a point in life where I needed some guidance, somebody to guide me through the maze of life, especially considering the fact that I was new to the country.

I have never lived in a western society before. Hence, it made sense for me to find someone who is already successful than me to potentially convince them to guide me.

As I didn’t know where to start, I decided to just be around people to start the search. Hence, I went to a social meetup with the intention to make some new friends while bowling.

After getting some liquid courage in, I started having a good time, met some folks who were mostly college students.

As the night went on, I came across a cute girl who introduced herself and mentioned something about building an asset on the side with help of some mentors who managed to walk away from their 9 to 5 grind.

I was intrigued. I was looking for a mentor to just guide me through life in Australia.

However, now I ran into someone who have potentially achieved my ultimate life goal and is coaching other people achieve the same by building an asset on the side.

Lets just say, she had my undivided attention. Also, she was hot, it also helped hehe!

We exchanged numbers to continue the conversation and later in the night, another girl said something quite similar.

I was intrigued again, but this time, I was thinking, if there was something that I may have missed such that many people are being coached by the same person to walk away from their 9 to 5.

I kept listening like as if I have never heard of it, and the more she spoke, the more alike was the message she had to share compared to the other girl who I spoke to.

We exchanged numbers and agreed to have a coffee catchup.

To make a long story short, we had about 5 to 6 catchups with the mentors and I was recommended the book “The Business of the 21st Century”.

After reading the book, I saw my first red flag. The book mentioned about network marketing, but nonetheless I decided to move forward, because I wanted the goal bad enough.

The second red flag was the posturing and the aura of supremacy that they were exuding each time we met, I saw right through that facade, but again, I ignored it, because the goal was worth it.

The third red flag was them mentioning about something that rhyms with Scamway and guess what like an idiot, I chose to willingly ignore that red flag too.

Finally, I was offered a “Door to mentorship” and soon I was attending weekly meetings, using the products, listening to audios from their app, daily communication on whatsapp, reading books etc.

Straight out of the gate, since I “earned” the mentorship, as they like to put it, I was love bombed by all of them with their fake smiley faces which I took for reality.

There was a relentless coaching on something called MSAWA (Make Someone Aware of Whats Available”, which is basically conversational judo, to get someone to ask you about the asset you are being coached to build.

Since then I have noticed that my conversations with people were too robotic as it had the agenda of wanting to get someone to ask me about mentorship.

To make matters worse along with the experiences I had at work at that time, I was diagnosed with hyperthyroid because of the excess stress I was taking on.

I wasn’t able to sleep. Hence, I stayed up some nights.

After about an year, I started sensing that something was not quite right.

I couldn’t put my finger on it just yet. I started my investigation.

I took an inventory of my life before the mentorship and at that point in time.

I was more depressed that before.

I was feeling lost than before.

I was sleeping less than before.

My expenses were going through the roof than before.

I was exhausted and had less energy than before despite taking the vitamins and other supplements they had made mandatory as part of the mentorship.

One key factor that really caught me by surprise was that I started seeing my mentors as people who knew that was best for me. They had a God like perception in me, which was not how I saw them prior earning mentorship and I found it to be odd more so, because they didn’t anything God like to elicit such a perception in me.

I started taking a close look at every single thing that they asked us to do on a daily basis.

Here is what I found:

First I took a close look at all the products to see what was in the products, what I had found was astonishing.

I used to use the toothpaste, mouth spray, hair wax, vitamins, protein powders, protein bars, energy drinks and shampoo from the brand, as they were daily consumables.

I found that the toothpaste, mouth spray and hair wax had something called endocrine disruptors in the products.

These are ingredients that could interfere with the functioning of your endocrine system.

I would highly recommend you to read about it on wikipedia here.

Here is TL;DR, it masculinizes women and feminizes men.

That being said, many products we use in our daily lives have endocrine disruptors.

I am someone who is mindful of these components and have been avoiding them like the plague for a long time.

Having them introduced into my life, by way of mentorship and the “successful couple” not being aware of it in the products that are being suggested for us to use on a daily basis, left a bad taste about the relationship in my mind.

Furthermore, there vitamins have the lowest quantity of individual ingredient quantity thats not enough to see any change at all.

The energy drinks are sugary drinks that made me put on weight and almost making me pre-diabetic.

As part of the mentorship, we were recommended to listen to audios via their proprietory app on a daily basis.

These audio are basically speeches of successful people in the network marketing, promoted under the guise of mentorship.

One day as I was traveling to work, I was listening to an audio on full volume.

This day I found myself hearing some music at a very low volume.

I found myself stopping the audio I was listening to hear what the music was.

Suddenly the music stopped.

I played the audio again and the music was back on, but it was almost impossible to hear.

To be clear, I could hear a musical tune going on, below the loud speech that was dominating in the audio I was listening to.

I reached work and got through the day.

I decided to do some digging about this.

I managed to download the audio to my mac and opening the audio in VLC media player and raised the volume all the way up to 200%.

Lo and behold there was a musical track at a very low volume in the speech audio.

I was thinking, why would there is a musical track at an almost inaudible volume in an audio track that is supposed to be a speech on mindset and success.

Just as usual, I started digging further, then I came across something called subliminal messages in audio tracks.

What I have learned is that, the best way to program your subconscious mind is to create affirmations with positive phrasing and embed them in a soundtrack at an almost inaudible level.

The soundtrack embedded must be in an almost inaudible level because the inaudible sound that doesn’t get picked up readily by the conscious mind is picked up by the subconscious mind and taken into action without any critical thinking or any further scrutiny.

Which is insanely powerful, IF AND ONLY IF the affirmations are beneficial to the listener.

For example, if the affirmation is, “I feel amazing and powerful everyday”. Thats the programming your subconscious mind receives.

On the contrary, if the affirmation is, “I am hopeless and powerless in life”. Thats the programming your subconscious mind receives, which I hope you agree is not very empowering to the listener.

When I discovered the presence of subliminal messages in the audio tracks and as evidenced by the way I felt, thought and acted when I was around my mentors, where I had the false perception of them as Gods, I knew by subconscious mind was being programmed to be submissive to my mentors without any raw data to backup that perception.

After that discovery, I cut all contact with the mentors.

At this point, I was psychologically tormented, biologically manipulated, and financially ruined by this mentorship.

Here is the kicker, you might think, that they would let you go, but nope.

They came to my address unannounced, neither did I give them my address and nor did they let me know they are coming.

Needless to say, that was a traumatic experience.

This is still scratching the surface of my experience with them, I didn’t even get into the psychological manipulative games they play during meetings with them, thats a whole another can of worms I don’t want to open here.

As you can see, I have been through a fair bit of drama in my life, much like anyone else.

I believe what we do with our life using the our life experiences, defines who we are.

I have seen people turn into malevolent narcissists, after encountering other malevolent narcissists, there by creating a dog-eat-dog dynamic in workplace and in our society in general.

However, I have chosen to be aware of this dynamic and use these life experiences to come up with solutions, as I was explore and gain more life experience.

After coming across these experiences with mentorship that started to affect me mentally, physically and financially, I went on a self-development journey.

I managed to recover physically in 3 months, despite the work stress.

The Christmas party was a blessing in disguise that greatly benefited the journey.

Over the years, I kept working on different aspects of self-development, despite the constant setbacks.

I was covertly targeted by ex-toxic coworkers, by way of a smear campaign in the industry thereby impeding my job prospects.

I was targeted by people who got affected by me speaking out about endocrine disruptors and how mentorship adversely affected my life.

I had to deal with more malevolent narcissists at workplaces than before. However, unlike in the past, I’m steady. I’m as rock solid as rock solid can be in all aspects of life.

The knowledge, tools and practices I developed and implemented, enabled me to transform myself into someone more mentally strong and stable.

My mission now is to help other people who face the same challenges I had faced in workplaces, with the same transformation that I have achieved, using the tools and products I developed over the years.

The transformation I had to go through involved developing myself physically, mentally and digitally.

Don’t worry, the financial would take care of itself, when you are sorted physically and mentally.

Digital transformation is like a bulletproof shield for online impersonation and an antidote against a toxic person’s malevolent intention to ruin your reputation online, either on social media or on the dark web.

and no, we are not going to the dark web, or meddle with that side of the web.

From all this experience what I had learned was that in order to guard themselves from toxic workplaces and toxic relationships, one would need to achieve a dramatic transformation in the physical, mental and digital aspect of their life, instead of relying solely on mutually beneficial relationships and friendships, which can fall apart any time, in a whim.

Essentially, what you have access to in this website, is the information I wished I had when I started working in the corporate world.

In my journey thus far, I have identified that the transformation I have achieved in these 3 areas of my life is what enabled me to see beyond the façade that toxic co-workers like to paint and make a display of at workplaces.

I have identified these areas while I was trying to be better programmer myself. Someone who can code, work with others and see through the office politics and subtle power manoeuvres co-workers play against each other.

Right now, you have access to all the information I had gathered over the years that was helpful for me and others to be able to handle toxic relationships and toxic workplaces.

Without any further adieu…

Welcome to the Cognitive Athlete.

Before you start going through each lesson you need to be aware of the following.

Disclaimer:

No part of this website is meant to be advice in relation to your health. If you have any physical or mental health issues, I wholeheartedly advice you to seek professional help.

Whats included in this website are physical and mental tools that I have found to be beneficial when working at a toxic workplace.

The effectiveness of these tools are dependent on how you use them in your life and how mindfully and regularly you choose to use them.

I’m treating this website as a means to share what I have learned thus far from various life experiences to my own brother, my future kids and grand kids.

This is the information that I wished I had when growing up.

If I had this information I could have avoided alot of mistakes, saved myself alot of sleepless nights and heartaches.

During my journey, I came across alot of tools, products, protocols and practices that I use and incorporate in my daily life.

Through out the website, I share these tools and products because I have personally experienced it’s effectiveness. Hence, I have decided to affiliate with these brands to promote their products.

I encourage you to take advantage of those products as it will help you become a cognitive athlete more efficiently.

Full disclosure, it would also incentivize me to keep refining the product to add more value to your lives, via this website.

This website will transform you into a higher quality individual.

If you look at the world, you’ll notice that everything around you is geared towards telling you that you are not good enough, that you need something else outside of yourself to feel fulfilled.

because of this covert messaging in our society through ads, news and other entertainment content we feel a psychological pain which most people try to numb by turning to weed, wine and women.

Turning humans into things to be used for numbing oneself of the pain one feels in the pursuit of happiness in life.

This website will help you turn into a physical and mental athlete, to the degree to which I have found it effective for myself.