Meet Marcus. Marcus is an awesome freelance sports coach in Cornwall.
From May until September, Marcus dedicates himself to his job as an AIGL (Activities Instructor/Group Leader) with PGL. PGL is the brilliant company that creates life enriching school trips and adventure holidays for memories that last a lifetime, and Marcus spends four/five months of the year taking others on hikes, climbs, bike-rides, surfing and canoeing, amongst a raft of other activities. And he loves it!
Then the summer holidays come to an end and Marcus returns to his home town of St Dennis in Cornwall. He used to have a mega confidence dive. Not anymore.
Throughout the winter months, Marcus is a freelance sports coach and available for last minute call-ups for local football teams, Brownie groups, school groups or foreign language student programmes. Marcus will step in to provide whatever coaching they need on that particular day. And he is utterly brilliant at it!
So why did he need to go on Game Changer? Marcus received an Asperger’s spectrum diagnosis, and until he went on the programme with Real Ideas, he thought this was a massive issue, that it would curtail his ambitions and be a barrier to his success. The information kept kicking his confidence in the guts, especially when his summer job came to an end.
Marcus says “Game Changer flicked a switch in my brain and made me see that I have a tendency to over-analyse and over-criticise myself, a large part of which is down to being somewhere on the spectrum. This is why my confidence would plummet, especially having had my diagnosis. The Real Ideas guys helped me identify healthy ways to self-assess myself, what I wanted to do and how I could do it – but in a positive way which makes much more sense and opens doors for me, rather than closing them. We also brainstormed alternatives for how I could hold onto, and achieve, my ambitions – in a slightly different way to how I initially saw it. And thanks to that, I’ve made it happen.”
Marcus is now part of an ongoing advocacy team alongside Game Changer Cornwall with the WorkAble campaign. He works with the Real Ideas team to help us help employers see how processes like interviews can really freak young people out, especially those with Asperger’s. And, alongside Real Ideas, Marcus is helping build a new understanding and new opportunities, for the matchmaking of young people and employers across Cornwall and beyond.
