Who are we?
Welcome to The Life Upgrades website. My name is Vasilis Stefanou (a.k.a. Vas), I am the Founder and CEO of this website. Even though other people involved every now and then behind the scenes you will receive products, coaching and most of the information on the website from me. Of course their time and efforts are greatly appreciated.
Why is this website helpful for you?
This website is like a diary of my own journey on how I’m constantly upgrading my life, as well as other people that I help. Also the rest of the contributors on this website have their own say on how they improve their way of life. We try to bring you enjoyable, easy-to-digest and actionable content. We care about staying authentic and giving you value-based content in simple words in order for you to implement the tips and ideas.
Who am I?
First of all, I’m just an ordinary person who used to be in the worst state possible. I was very skinny and lived a very unhealthy lifestyle. I was always stressed and my way of thinking was very negative. I was also really shy, to the point that people had to talk to me first and I still didn’t know what to say most of the time. My experiences with relationships were also quite bad. Lastly I dropped out of university and had no idea on what to do next with my life.
Then I decided to change everything and create a life which I will be grateful for. So I started working out, eating healthier, learning more about the things that I wanted to improve in my life and worked in various industries. Apart from reading countless books, I received multiple diplomas & certificates and also practical advice from mentors. Here are most of my credentials:

Fitness and Martial Arts
- Diploma in Health & Fitness, Personal Training and Fitness Instructing level 3 (Anatomy, Basic nutrition, Gym and bodyweight exercises, Periodisation, Coaching, Functional training, Circuit training, Suspended movement, Kettlebell training) by Premier Global NASM
- Diploma in 200 hours Yoga Alliance Teacher (History and Philosophy of Yoga, Asanas, Pranayamas, Mantras, Mudras, Meditation, Kriyas, Ayurveda, Anatomy, Kundalini) by Yoga Europe School
- Ambassador in Cyprus under Filipino Combat Systems / FCS Kali (Impact weapons, Bladed weapons, Empty hands, Silat and Dumog)
- Assistant Instructor in Goeksel-style Wing Chun / Ving Tsun Kung Fu (Siu Nim Tao, Chum Kiu, Muk Jan Chong, Chi sau)
- Disciple of traditional Chen-style Tai Chi Chuan / Taiji Quan (Yilu, Chan Si Gong, Daoist Breathing and Meditation, Tui shou, Jian and Gunshu weapons)
- Disciple of Shifu Lindsey Wei by Wudang White Horse (Qi Gong Fundamentals, Bone Marrow Washing, Daoist Mudras, Cosmic Movement – Intro to Ba Gua, Wudang Ethics and Etiquette)
- Blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by 5 Rounds MMA
- Background in Gracie Barra Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling, Mixed Martial Arts and Shaolin Kung Fu / Wushu
- Certificate in 5 Element Qigong Course and 8 Trigram Organ Qigong Course by White Tiger Qigong
- Attended Harmonising of the 5 Elements (Neidan / Neigong / Internal Alchemy and Meditation) Live Workshops and studied The Microcosmic Orbit Course & Yi Jin Jing by Damo Mitchell from Lotus Nei Gong
- Certificate in Brain Coaching Course by Dr. Kristen Willuemier
- Attended Live Workshops with Grand Master Bobby Taboada from Balintawak Arnis Cuentada Taboada System
- Attended Live Workshops with Guro Daniel Lonero from XTMA using Inosanto method on Kali, Silat & Boxing with Guest star, Guro Damon Caro (Senior Instructor under Guro Dan Inosanto)
- Attended Live Workshops with Guro Jay Jasper Pugao from Visayan Style Corto Kadena Larga Mano Eskrima
- Studied Tri-V Curriculum by Tuhon Jared Wihongi from Pekiti Tirsia Tactical Association and Emotional Candy Series: The Artful Pursuit of Combat featuring Doug Marcaida
- Studied Mastering Sumbrada (The Bones, The Meat) by Guro Mark Mikita
- Studied Silat, Panantukan – The Art of Weaponized Empty Hands and Kali – Way of the Weapon by Sakan Lam from Core Combat Chiang Mai
- Studied FMA Concepts by Mark Anastacio from Bais Tres Manos and Anastacio Kali Association
- Certificate in Elite Calisthenics Specialist Course by Calisthenics Kingz
- Certificate in Primal Kettlebell Course by Onnit’s Senior Instructor Eric Leija
- Studied Enter the Kettlebell Course by Pavel Tsatsouline
- Studied Introduction to Indian Clubs Course by FMS and Clubbell Mass Evolution by Onnit’s Master Instructor Shane Heins
- Studied Ageless Mobility, Circular Strength Training Group Exercise and TACFIT – King of Clubs Courses by Scott Sonnon
- Studied Steve Maxwell’s Workouts & Seminars (Encyclopedia of Joint Mobility, Integrated Breathing, Ladder and Hypoxic Training, Spartan 300 Workout, Travelogues)
- Studied GMB Fitness Courses (Elements, Floor One, Parallettes One and Two, Rings One and Two)
- Studied Gymnastic Bodies Courses (Fundamentals, Foundation One, Stretch Series)
Academic Studies
- Diploma in Inter-culturally Speaking (Defining culture and Geert Hofstede’s ‘software of the mind’, Carl G. Jung’s psychological types and Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Language and social identity, Gender and social class in social interaction, Time, space, context and nonverbal communication in different cultures, Geert Hofstede’s ‘dimensions’ of national cultures, Cultural cohesion, prejudice and stereotypes of ‘the other’, Culture shock, immigration and acculturation, Business cultures and globalised world, Becoming an inter-cultural communicator) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Origins of Human Behaviour (Human evolution as a progress, Phylogeny – human ancestors and primate cousins, The earliest hominins, The origins of bipedal locomotion, The evolution of the brain and intelligence, The origins of language, Sex and social organisation, Diet and subsistence, The origin of modern humans, The evolution of culture – art, symbolism and religion) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Ritual and Religion in Prehistory (Defining ritual and religion, Evolution of religion and symbolism, Mortuary rituals, Domestic rituals, Totemism, animism and shamanism, Fertility cults and figurines, Ancestor cults and figures, Case study – Stonehenge, Cosmology, astronomy and sun cult in Peru, Deities, human sacrifice and votive offerings to gods) by Oxford University
- Diploma in The First Civilization – Mesopotamia (The land of Mesopotamia, Uruk – The world’s first city and cities of the south, Cuneiform writing, cylinder seals and clay tablets, Sumerian religion and temples, The Sumerian King List, city-states and Gilgamesh – The perfect king, Death and burial, Sumer’s neighbours and trading, Sargon of Akkad and the culture of the first empire, The Sumerian ‘revival’, Sumerian legacy and Hammurapi of Babylon) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Ancient Egypt (Worldview and geography, The Nile river and the inundation, Major cities and resources, The development of Egyptology, The Predynastic Period to the Early Dynastic Period, The Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom, The Second Intermediate Period to Alexander the Great, The Battle of Megiddo – analysing written evidence, Gods and their cults, Creation myths and the mythic environment, Egyptian temples and magic spells, Death and aspects of the soul, Mummification and afterlife beliefs, Burial customs, Development of art and crafts, Predynastic and Early Dynastic Art, Politics and government, The royal family’s daily life and duties, Female pharaohs, Palaces and Egyptian settlements, Exploring Deir el-Medina, The household and social pyramid, Morality and education, Language and literature, Scribes and the earliest hieroglyphs, Foreigners and Egyptianisation, Trade and diplomacy, Pre-New Kingdom and New Kingdom warfare) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Greek Mythology (Myths and mythology, Iliad, Troy and the historicity of myth, Odyssey, allegory and comparative mythology, Hesiod – the origins of the Gods and the world, Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex, Freud and the psychoanalysis of myths, Hidden meanings – Medusa and Prometheus, Herakles’s labours – myth, art and ideology, Jason and the Argonauts, Structuralism and beyond, Plato and the myth of Atlantis) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Where Two Hands Meet – Human Perfection in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Fusus al-hikam (An introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi and the Fusus al-hikam, Task – explore hearing, The life and times of Ibn ‘Arabi, Task – explore seeing, The Circle of Creation – unity and diversity, Task – explore breathing, The truly human being – Adam and the angels, Task – explore walking, Relationships of Dependence and Independence, Universals and particulars, The Two Hands, Task – explore the hands) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Literary Theory (Meaning in literature, Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton, Approaches to literature, Literary criticism vs. literary theory, The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy by Wimsatt and Beardsley, Russian Formalism and the New Criticism, Literary Theory by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Art of Technique by Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, The language of paradox in poetry and New Critic Cleanth Brooks, The Sick Rose by William Blake and close reading, Reader-response criticism, My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, Hermeneutics and phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Wolfgang Iser’s implied reader, Hans Robert Jauss’s horizon of expectations, Stanley Fish’s interpretive communities, Structuralism, Semiotics by Ferdinand de Saussure, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Saussure on sign, Signs in narratives by Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson on language and literature – metaphor and metonymy, Reading like a structuralist, Post-structuralism, Post-structuralist critic – Jacques Derrida, Derrida on différance, Deconstruction and Jane Eyre, Reading like a post-structuralist, Psychoanalysis and literature, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The foundation of psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud, Reading like a Freudian, Post-Freudian critic – Jacques Lacan, Feminist literary theories, Literature and politics, Anglo-American and French feminism, Women’s writing and images of women criticism, Anxiety of authorship by Gilbert and Gubar, Gender and language, An imaginary utopia by Hélene Cixous, Reading like a feminist critic, Dialectics and Marxism, Ideology and literature, State power vs state control and interpellation of individuals by Louis Althusser, Reading like a Marxist critic, Cultural materialism, Post-colonial literary theory, Coloniser and colonised, Otherness in Heart of Darkness, Reading post-colonial literature, Edward Said on post-colonial literature, Edward Brathwaite’s analysis of Caribbean poetry, Theory’s relevance today, Recent developments in literary theory) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Introduction to Philosophy (Definition and value of Philosophy, Socrates’ Apology and ‘the unexamined life’, Knowledge and arguments, Descartes’ Meditations and Cogito Ergo Sum, Descartes’ rationalism vs Hume’s empiricism, Free will and freedom, Cause/reason distinction and moral agents, Schopenhauer and Strawson on determinism, Existence, space, time and causality, Matter, law’s of nature and forces of the world, Relativism, realism, idealism, realism, conceptualism and nominalism, Galileo and Descartes on properties of material substances, Locke and Berkeley on primary and secondary qualities, Kant and transcendental idealism, Morality and ethical dilemmas, Meta-ethics – clarifying ethical concepts, Ethical methodology – reliable methods on validating morality, Normative ethics – systematic and comprehensive system of rules, Deontological ethics and moral obligation, Consequentialist ethics and outcomes of actions, Virtue ethics and moral character, Kant and Hume on morality, Utilitarianism – for and against, Thought experiment – The trolley problem, Thought experiment – Nicholas the Merchant and the Oxford Riots) by Oxford University
- Diploma in Reality, Being and Existence – Metaphysics (Defining Metaphysics, Ontology and Change, Metaphysics vs epistemology, Meta-metaphysics, Quine on existence – ‘On What There Is’, Ontological disputes, Existence of ideas in the mind – Pegasus and Sherlock Holmes, Plato’s beard and Occam’s razor, Wyman’s possibilia and Russell’s Theory of Descriptions, Plato’s Parmenides – ‘One over many’, Plato’s Republic – ‘Theory of Forms’ and ‘Allegory of the cave’, Plato vs Aristotle on universals and particulars, Armstrong on universals, Realism and John Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, Idealism and Berkeley’s ‘Three Dialogues’, Primary and secondary qualities – arguments on mind dependent vs mind independent, Free will and determinism, Hard determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism, The problem of the freedom of the will, Van Inwagen – ‘The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism’, Causality – cause and effect, Hume on causation and ‘Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’, Space and time, Leibniz–Newton debate, Leibniz–Clarke correspondence, Smart – ‘The Space-Time World’, The reality of time, McTaggart on the nature of existence, Past, present, future and flow of time) by Oxford University
- Diploma in The Nature and Existence of God (Introduction – religious language, God’s nature – being all powerful; being all-knowing; being perfectly good; being omnipresent; being incorporeal; being eternal, God’s existence – ontological argument; cosmological arguments; design arguments, Religious experience, The problem of evil) by Oxford University
- Diplomas in Taoism (History, Main ideas and practicality, Creators and contributors, Symbolism, Books and resources) by Centre of Excellence
- Diplomas in Stoicism (History, Main ideas and practicality, Creators and contributors, Books and resources) by Centre of Excellence
- Certificate in Chinese Culture (History, Politics, Philosophy and religion, Literature and arts, Symbolism, Traditional festivals and customs, Science and technology, Sports and martial arts, Culinary culture, Clothing and adornment) by China Explore Adam
- Certificate in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy Seminars by Center of Lifelong Learning Tsaousi
- Attended Jung, Myth, and the Archetypal Imagination Course (Myth as hero by James Hillman, Jung – man of science and visionary, Mythic figures, Archetypes of the collective unconscious, Mandalas and the psychological process of individuation, Jungian perspective on symbols and metaphors, Carl Jung’s journey from God by Pravin Thevathasan, The archetypes, Is the modern psyche undergoing a collective rite of passage? by Richard Tarnas, Telemachus’ rite of passage, Dear grey eyes by C. Downing, Poseidon vs Athena – Gods and Goddesses of the Odyssey, Hermes’ hymn from the Odyssey, Anima Mundi by James Hillman, Introduction & the function of myth by R. Segal, On synchronicity by Carl Jung, Richard Tarnas on synchronicity – before and after Carl Jung, The hero’s adventure from Joseph Campbell and the power of myth, Odysseus – Mythmaker, warrior and king, The Odyssey & individuation, ‘The Warrior’ by Robert Moore, ‘The King’ by Robert Moore, The Red Book – Jung and the profoundly personal by James Hillman, The mythic imagination by Robert Moore, Archetypal roles of Athena, Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope, Symbolic rituals and altars, Iliad & Odyssey by Campbell, Trauma and the informed heart – Donald Kalsched, The Eumenides Lines from The Oresteia by Aeschylus) by Philosophical Research Society
- Attended Language and Identity seminar (Culture, Language and Identity, Language and Social Class, Language and Gender, Attitudes to Language) by Oxford University
Business and Personal Development
- Author, Coach and Content Creator
- Co-owner of the award-winning and successful Start-up Mobile App SpinDeals app
- Diploma in Marketing Studies (Marketing Management, Business Organisation, Commercial Law, Economics, Statistics) by The Cyprus Institute of Marketing
- Certificate in Image Consulting Course (Dressing, Body Language, Manners & Etiquette) by IAP Career College
- Certificates in The Secrets of Body Language and Digital Body Language Courses by Vanessa Van Edwards
- Studied Master your People Skills Course by Vanessa Van Edwards
- Studied The Art of Networking Course by The Art of Charm
- ECDL Certificate including all the modules by European Computer Driving License Foundation
- Certificate in Barista Course (including Chinese & Japanese Tea Ceremonies and Cacao) by Alchemy Bartending School
- Certificate in ITA Certified Tea Sommelier by International Tea Academy (Foundations of Chinese tea, International tea industry, Chinese tea ceremony and history, The art and science of brewing tea, Traditional Chinese methods, The Five Elements theory, Tea blending)
- Attended Entrepreneur Bootcamp by John Lee
Every single day I learn and grow from different experiences and resources. That’s why this website is about upgrading my life and if you are like me then join us and you can upgrade it along with us. Moreover you can check out what others think of working with me and more of my work. If you like the website’s content and want to book for personal coaching or contact for other business inquiries then you can do so via the social media accounts.