Play to win, one shift at a time.

How I Learned to Help People Win on Purpose

When I was eight, I tried to apply as a balut vendor. I just wanted to work and earn a little, but they said I was too young. By Grade 3, I was already peddling goods in Antipolo. We weren’t “struggling” in the way people use that word on LinkedIn. We were among the poorest of the poor. I sell so we can eat. I work because there is no spare, no cushion, no safety net.

Of course I dreamed of a better life. Maybe you did too. But back then, it felt like just that—a dream. In my mind, the world didn’t really change for families like ours. Ganito na talaga. Unless… sinwerte ka. That was my early belief: hard work was expected, but luck was the only real strategy.

Maybe you also grew up with some version of that story. “Work hard, pray for luck, hope something breaks your way.” If that was your script too, you’ll understand why the next chapters of my life hit me so hard.

The Seminary: Holiness, Hope, and a Hidden Door

I entered the seminary because I wanted to be good. Not “good” as in hitting targets, but good in a holy way. I liked the idea that my life could be fully given to something bigger than my own survival. We prayed, studied, worked together. There was structure. There was meaning.

Later, at Christ the King College in Quezon City, I realized something many of my classmates already knew. For a lot of us, the seminary was also a door to college. For many boys from poor families, this was the only realistic way to study and finish a degree. That wasn’t my conscious reason when I entered, but looking back, I see the grace in it. The seminary didn’t just offer priesthood; it offered possibility.

More than that, it gave me a microphone.

In my first year of college, I started giving recollections and retreats. No PowerPoint. No LED wall. Just me, a room full of students or parishioners, and two to three hours to say something that might matter. That’s where I learned to speak in public, to hold attention, to bring people from laughter to silence.

We believed that if you touched people emotionally, they would reflect—and maybe, they would choose to change. I learned to read the room, to use stories, to test lines that made people stop and think about their own lives. The seminary wasn’t just a place of prayer for me; it was a lab where I learned leadership, responsibility, and the power of words.

Think about your own life for a moment. Was there a place like that for you—a school, a church, a company—where you started to realize you could influence people more than you thought?

When Faith Started Looking Outside the Walls

While I was still in the seminary, my world widened. I didn’t just see classrooms and chapels; I saw the lives of farmers and workers up close. The people who produced food, who worked the land, who faced the heat and rain—many of them were not the ones benefiting from what they created.

That didn’t feel right.

The more I saw these realities, the more a question grew in me: if I truly wanted to serve, was my place only inside the seminary? Or was there something I needed to do outside the walls?

Some people think seminary life and activism are total opposites. For me, they came from the same root: a desire to serve and to make life better for more people. That desire is what eventually pushed me to step out.

Maybe you’ve felt that too—this tension between staying where it’s safe and stepping into the mess where people are actually hurting.

Activism: From Big Words to Real People

When I left the seminary, I became a campus activist. The world became louder. There were rallies, meetings, late-night discussions about injustice, poverty, corruption, imperialism. We used big words to explain big systems. We were young, idealistic, and often angry.

But very quickly, I noticed that most people don’t speak in big words like imperyalismo or “systemic injustice.” They speak in everyday pain:

“Walang pera.” “Kapus-palad.” “Ipinanganak kaming mahirap.”

If there’s one thing my activist years really taught me, it’s this: if you want people to move, you have to start where they are.

I learned three things the hard way:

First, you have to listen. You can’t just arrive with your analysis and slogans. You need to understand people’s stories, fears, and limits. Second, you have to speak their language. If your ideas don’t connect to their daily life, they won’t land, no matter how “correct” they are. Third, words are not enough. People might agree in a meeting or cheer at a rally, but if there’s no simple way for them to act and sustain that action, nothing really changes.

Maybe you’ve seen this in your own world—at work, in church, in community projects. The idea is good. People nod. But without listening, clear language, and a way to act, it dies quietly.

What All This Taught Me About Real Change

So let me pull these threads together for you.

As a child, I believed luck was the only way out. In the seminary, I discovered the power of words, shared experiences, and guided reflection to open doors for people. In activism, I learned that right ideas and passionate speeches are not enough—you must listen deeply, speak in a way people can own, and build simple paths for action.

All of that shapes how I design shifts today.

When I talk about Shift Experiences, it’s not coming from theory. It’s coming from those early mornings selling in Antipolo, those long retreat sessions in the seminary, and those noisy, imperfect meetings in activism.

I don’t just ask, “What’s the right concept?” I ask, “How will this feel to a real person, in a real day, with real problems? Can they hear it? Can they accept it? Can they do something small with it tomorrow?”

And this is where your story comes in.

As you read this, maybe part of you is remembering your own version of waking up poor, or discovering your voice, or realizing that big words don’t change people—small, honest shifts do. If any part of my story makes you pause and see your own life differently, then this part has already done its work.

From here, let’s move into another season that shaped me the most: my years as a teacher.

Accidental Teacher, Unprepared Speaker

When I started teaching, I wasn’t ready.

I was about to graduate with a AB in Political Science. I had no formal background in Education. Sure, I had experience speaking in the seminary and as an activist—I learned by watching great speakers hold a room, tell stories, make people listen. But that was more about influence than teaching. My “training” was mostly: observe, copy, repeat.

So when I first entered a real classroom as a teacher, that’s exactly what I did. I copied. I copied the way my teachers talked. I copied how they walked around the room, how they wrote on the board, how they asked questions.

And then I discovered something humbling: what worked for them did not work for my students.

Maybe you’ve had that moment too—when you copy someone you admire, only to realize your people aren’t responding the same way. Awkward, di ba?

The Lecture Trap (And Why It Wasn’t Working)

I was teaching at National College of Business and Arts. The school had a good library, and that library saved me.

At first, I did what many unprepared teachers do: I lectured. When you’re not ready, lecture is the easiest path. You talk, they listen (or pretend to). Then, to “make it participative,” you ask students to report. On paper, it looks like they’re engaged. In reality, many are just reading slides and counting minutes.

I realized I was falling into that trap. It wasn’t just laziness—though some teachers really do hide behind student reports to avoid preparing. It was habit. It was the default model we were all given growing up.

But I could see it in my students’ faces. They weren’t really learning. They were surviving.

So I went to the library.

Turning the Classroom into a Game (Before I Knew the Word)

In the library, I discovered books on cooperative learning, participative methods, strategies to make students actually engage. These weren’t magic tricks. They were simple shifts:

• Let students work in teams.
• Give them real problems to solve, not just text to copy.
• Make them responsible for finding answers.
• Treat the classroom like a lab, not a lecture hall.

I started experimenting.

Instead of me doing all the talking, I gave them challenges. I let them work in groups. I pushed them to research, argue, decide. I didn’t have the word “gamification” back then, but that’s basically what I was doing—turning learning into something with stakes, roles, and a bit of fun.

And something changed.

The more the students became responsible for finding answers, the more involved they became. When they worked in teams, they didn’t just stay awake; they cared. They argued. They laughed. They tried.

Maybe you’ve seen this too—when you stop talking at people and let them wrestle with a problem, the room shifts.

Teaching Everything So I Could Learn Everything

Here’s the funny part: I wasn’t loaded with many subjects because I was the best teacher. I was the newest teacher.

Every time a teacher (usually a woman in the Philippines) went on maternity leave, someone had to take over. That “someone” was me.

So I ended up teaching almost everything: Math (Algebra and Trigonometry). Science (Chemistry, Biology). Communication Arts. Creative Writing.

I learned Math because I had to teach Math. I learned Science because I had to teach Science. I learned English better because I had to teach Communication Arts. I learned Creative Writing because my students needed to write.

I wish I had a formal Education background then. But what I had was curiosity and pressure. I had to learn fast because my students couldn’t wait. The classroom became my training ground.

I discovered something important: I wasn’t just teaching from books—I was learning with them.

And that changed how I saw my role. I wasn’t the “all-knowing” teacher. I was the more responsible learner who went ahead so I could guide them.

The Day the Principal Called Me In

Not everyone liked my methods.

Some teachers didn’t appreciate the noise from my classes, the movement, the group activities. For them, a “good” class was quiet, orderly, and teacher-centered. Mine was… not that.

One day, I was called to the principal’s office. She told me several teachers had complained that I didn’t know how to teach. My methods were “different.” They didn’t like that I wasn’t lecturing the way they did.

I could have defended myself, argued, explained. Instead, I made a simple proposal.

I told her, “Ma’am, the exams are coming. Let the supervisor create the test. If my students fail, I’ll go. If they don’t learn, then my method is wrong.”

She agreed.

When the exam results came in, most of my students got high scores. Some even got perfect scores. The principal was surprised. She thought maybe the test was too easy. But the truth was simple: the students were good—because they had been actively learning, not just copying.

They hadn’t just memorized formulas. They had discovered how things worked.

That first year of teaching taught me a big lesson: if you want people to learn deeply, give them more chances to say, “Pwede pala ‘yon. Ganun pala ‘yon.”

Aha Moments and the Shift in How Students Learn

Those “aha” moments in the classroom made me obsessed.

I noticed that when students started to think about the subject, not just to pass the subject, something shifted. When they were allowed to explore, to ask “What if we do it this way?”, learning stopped being a chore and became a challenge.

Without using the term, I was already designing shift experiences:

• Learning as observation, yes—but also discovery.
• Learning as receiving—but also experimenting.
• Learning as answering—but sometimes changing the question.

Students realized that they didn’t always have to wait for the teacher to give the answer. They could find patterns, test ideas, and see what worked. That’s a big identity shift: from “I’m not good at this” to “I can figure this out.”

Maybe you’ve had a moment like that too—when you stopped memorizing and started playing with ideas. That’s when real learning happens.

Leaving the Classroom for the Stage

After about ten years of teaching, I left the academe. I wanted to become a motivational speaker. I didn’t even think of myself as a trainer yet. I just knew I loved motivating people. I loved seeing eyes light up, faces soften, postures change.

The struggle was real.

For the first six months—and honestly, for the first year—I had very few clients. What I earned was nowhere near what I made as a full-time teacher. There were many days when I wondered if I had made a mistake.

But I kept doing what I had always done: I observed.

I watched other speakers. I copied how they told stories, how they moved, how they used their voice. I did in the corporate world what I did as a young teacher—I mirrored those ahead of me.

Until one day, I realized: if I just copy, I will always be 5–10 years behind.

Why Copying Will Always Keep You Behind

In companies, people talk a lot about “best practices.” Learn the best practice, copy it, roll it out. But here’s the problem: the best practice of today will be the obsolete practice a year or two from now.

I saw this in speaking and training.

The speakers I admired had spent years refining their craft. If I copied their style today, it might take me five or ten years to get to where they are now. By that time, they would have moved on. I would always be chasing their shadow.

I didn’t want that.

I remembered my students. They didn’t become good just by copying my solution on the board. They became good when they discovered their own ways of solving problems, when they explored things that hadn’t been tried in class yet.

So I asked myself:

What if I stop asking, “How can I be like them?”

And start asking, “What can I see that others haven’t seen yet?”

“What shift can I create that will matter five or ten years from now?”

Those questions changed everything.

Teaching Taught Me to Change the Question

Looking back, I realized it was teaching that truly trained me for this shift work.

My students learned best when they:

• Looked for something useful and meaningful to them.
• Asked, “What if we try it this way?”
• Took ownership of the experiment.
• Saw results that weren’t just “better,” but sometimes completely different from what they expected.

I started applying the same approach to my own life and work. I stopped being the teacher who just looked at the textbook and memorized answers. I became the teacher—and later, the speaker—who looked for many answers to one question, and sometimes changed the question altogether.

That, for me, is the essence of a shift experience: it doesn’t just give you a new answer. It invites you to see the problem differently, to ask better questions, and to try new moves.

At that time, I didn’t have the phrase “Shift Experience Design” yet. I just knew this: when people are engaged in discovery, when they are allowed to experiment and own the outcome, something powerful happens.

They don’t just learn. They shift.

We’ll talk about how all of this became Shift Experience Design later. For now, this is the season where I learned, sometimes the hard way, that real growth—for students, for audiences, and for myself—comes when we stop only copying and start creating.

Chasing the Big Stage

When I left the academe, I didn’t dream of becoming a “trainer.” I wanted to be a motivational speaker.

My heroes were people like Tony Robbins and Les Brown. I watched their videos, studied their timing, their stories, their energy. I joined Toastmasters to learn the craft of public speaking. I wanted to do what they did—stand on stage, move people, change lives.

But in many Toastmasters clubs, something bothered me. A lot of us (including me) were trying very hard to make an impression. Speeches became more theatrical than truthful. The goal was to make people laugh, make them cry, win the award, become “world champion.” That’s fun—and there’s nothing wrong with contests—but it doesn’t automatically mean you’re truly helping people in the real world.

Maybe you’ve been there too, in your own field—copying the “stars,” chasing recognition, then feeling a quiet, “So what now?” afterward.

The Mentor Who Said, “It’s Not About You”

One day, I met a mentor, Vic Santiago.

He said something that cut through my ego: “The problem with many speakers is they think it’s all about them.”

He told me, “Public speaking may begin with you, but it’s not about you. It’s about the audience. If you want to be truly effective, you have to begin where your audience is—not where your story is.”

That changed everything.

I have hundreds of stories. You probably do too. But Vic helped me see that people don’t need all my stories. What they need is to see their own story more clearly. My story (or someone else’s) is only useful if it helps them notice their patterns and ask, “Bakit nga ba ganito pa rin ako? Pwede palang iba.”

From that moment, my mental question shifted from “How do I become the best motivational speaker in the world?” to “How can I help one person at a time, one speech at a time?”

Changing the Question

For a long time, my questions were like everyone else’s:

• “What’s the best way to deliver this speech so they won’t get bored?”
• “How can I impress them?”
• “How can I look like the pros I admire?”

Those are normal questions. Many professionals, in any field, ask versions of them.

But slowly, I realized they were the wrong starting point.

I began to replace them with different questions:

• “What do these people need to hear right now?”
• “What problem are they trying to solve?”
• “What needs to shift in how they see themselves, their work, their choices?”
• “If something changes in the way they think, feel, and act, what would that look like on Monday?”

When you change the question, you change the design.

Instead of building a speech to showcase my skill, I started building experiences to serve their shift—even if the shift was small. Especially if it was small.

Ask yourself: in your work, whose question are you really answering—yours, or theirs?

From Best Practices to Better Questions

Like many beginners, I spent years copying the masters.

In corporate, we call it “best practices.” Watch what the best are doing, copy it, roll it out. But here’s the problem: the best practice of today will often be the obsolete practice a year or two from now.

I realized: if I only copy what my idols are doing now, I’ll always be 5–10 years behind. It took them years to master that style. By the time I catch up, the world has moved on—and so have they.

Teaching had already shown me that students don’t grow just by copying the teacher’s solution on the board. They grow by discovering solutions, by playing with possibilities, by asking, “What if we do it this way?”

So I turned that lens on myself.

Instead of asking, “How can I be like them?”, I began to ask:

• “What are my clients and audiences struggling with that others are not seeing yet?”
• “What if there’s a better way to help them than what’s currently ‘popular’?”
• “What questions are we not asking that could change everything?”

Those questions pulled me away from pure imitation and toward creation.

Discovering Design Thinking by Accident

As I moved deeper into training—not just speaking—I started working on leadership, innovation, creativity, and other topics. I wanted to give people a lot of value, so my instinct was to pack sessions with ideas.

The result? Overwhelm.

Participants told me the workshops were great, but I could feel it: I was giving them too much and not guiding them well enough on what really matters.

That’s when I discovered design thinking and learning experience design.

Design thinking taught me a simple but powerful order:

• Start with people. Listen first.
• Understand the problem before jumping to solutions.
• Clarify what really matters to them—what delights them, not just what’s “OK.”
• Then design options, test, simplify, refine.

I loved that approach, because I’d seen the same thing in my classes before. People often ask for solutions that are visible, familiar, or trendy—but the solution that truly delights them is usually something they haven’t imagined yet.

By listening, clarifying, and designing with them, we can co-create something new—something that makes them say, “Pwede pala ‘yon. Kaya palang gawin ‘yan.”

That’s when I started realizing: I’m not just a speaker or trainer. I’m designing experiences that help people see new possibilities and try new moves.

The Power of One Shift

Here’s another discovery: people don’t need 100 new tricks.

If one shift helps them:

• Sell 10 times more,
• Save four hours a day,
• Handle conflict without fear,
• Or see themselves as capable instead of “hanggang dito na lang,”

then that one shift is more valuable than a hundred tips they’ll forget by next week.

A shift, for me, is like a pivot. It’s a change in direction—not downward, not backward—but forward and higher. It answers a different question. It opens a different path.

Sometimes that shift is a question: “What if I stop trying to impress and start trying to understand?” Sometimes it’s a new way of working: “What if we change how we run this one meeting every week?”

Most people are operating on a tiny fraction of their potential, not because they’re lazy or weak, but because the other possibilities are invisible to them. They’ve never been invited to ask different questions, to experiment, to risk doing only one thing differently instead of trying to change everything.

That’s what my work slowly became about.

Not just teaching. Not just motivating. But designing experiences where people can ask new questions, see new options, and commit to one shift at a time that genuinely changes how they work, lead, and live.

Later, I would give this a name—Shift Experience Design. But even before I had the label, the pattern was there:

Listen deeply. Change the question. Design for one meaningful shift.

And that’s still what I’m doing today.