My Journey
Disillusionment. A Venn Diagram. Bicycles. Everyone’s got a story. This is mine.
The realization I tried to avoid.
I had everything I thought I was supposed to want. I was living in gorgeous San Francisco, California. I biked to work each day to my six-figure tech sales job. My condo had an ocean view, off-street parking, and washer/dryer in-unit. (Repeat: in-unit!)
Even though I shared my life with a beautiful partner and wonderful circle of friends, I had a gnawing sensation of incompleteness. I was persistently unhappy. My fire wasn’t lit. I now call it “spiritual inflammation” — it felt like I was having a low-level allergic reaction to my everyday life. It wasn’t always acute, but it was always waiting just below the surface, ready to flare up.
My relationship had been struggling for years. The tremendous effort from both sides served to stabilize, but not improve, the situation. I was doing OK at my job and liked my team, but the work was grinding on me, and I felt a growing personal conflict with the product I was selling. Drinking had become a daily habit. Deep down, I knew my relationship and my job were dead ends, but I was hiding from this terrifying & destabilizing truth.
The day I decided to end it, I was biking home through a perfect December evening in Golden Gate Park. The trees were black construction-paper cutouts against the ombre of a vivid California sunset. I was enraptured with the moment, when I realized in a shattering flash that I was being seduced into ignoring my pain by the beauty and comfort of my life, and I would never escape its magnetic pull without a deliberate act of departure.
If I didn’t get out, I might be trapped in this state of spiritual inflammation forever. I had to quit my job, and I had to leave my partner. But with those two things gone, what would be tethering me to my current life? Nothing. If I was getting out, I was getting all the way out. I committed at that moment to spend the next year traveling the world by bicycle. I didn’t need a shift, I needed a full reset.
Over the holidays, I began telling my family & friends I was leaving in the spring. I was terrified, but I knew by telling them, I’d be held accountable to doing it. Then came the hardest part, telling my partner. And then the slow, terrible logistics of actually taking apart my life, brick by brick. Over the following four months, I sold almost everything I owned. I closed one final, massive, mic-drop deal at work, then quit the following day.
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Literally riding into the sunset.
On May 1, 2018, I rode out the door with just what fit on my bicycle, and I began the most transformational chapter of my life so far: 16 months on the road, solo.
From day one, it was immediately clear I had made the right choice. I cycled south toward Los Angeles, and as I rode the ribbon of highway alongside crashing Pacific waves, I felt unbounded and clear. Within days, tremendous surges of energy began to overtake me at random. I cried uncontrollably at times, my whole body shaking with sobs as I rode along.
I was unable to contain the joy within me, and the raw power of its release felt a little disturbing. I questioned myself...was I going crazy with these long isolated hours on the bike? What meaning could I make of this chaotic, blissful storm inside me? I recall telling a friend I felt as if I was “testing the universe’s capacity to experience joy.” I also felt waves of intense sadness, heartache, excitement, melancholy, and nostalgia, as well as a deep, deep reverence for the experience of life itself. It was heavy shit, and yet I’d never felt so light.
It was an experience of intimacy with reality I had felt only fleetingly before. It felt as if I was awakening new senses, broadening my capacity for experience at every level, good and bad. These waves of emotion would continue in me for months. I became accustomed to crying on a daily basis, a function of my body releasing and metabolizing energy, just like it does with food.
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In search of Ikigai.
When I was plotting my travel, I also planned an agenda beyond my destinations.
I set a clear intention to seek my purpose in the world. I was inspired by a Japanese concept called Ikigai, which loosely translates as “a reason for being.” Westerners have applied the concept to mean “purpose,” and lovingly grafted it onto our worldview by means of a handy Venn diagram:
Image Credit: Mark Winn, “What Is Your Ikigai?” Concept Credit: Andres Zuzunaga
I knew my Ikigai was out of balance in my sales career.
I was good at it, I got paid well, BUT it was a far cry from what I loved.
I knew that as I traveled I’d encounter people with different ways of being, and I decided that whenever I met someone who inspired me, I’d ask them what their Ikigai was, to learn how I might find my own. It came in and out of focus as I went along, but when I connected with really inspiring people, I always brought it up.
What’s your reason for being? What brings you passion, purpose and balance? What makes you wake up thrilled for the next day of your life to begin?
About seven months in, my journey shifted abruptly from outward to inward. I had been moving relentlessly, taking in a lifetime's worth of new experiences and places. I was exhausted, lonely, and running out of steam.
Luckily, that’s when I arrived in Bali, Indonesia—the archetypal island paradise.
Although I knew nothing about Eat, Pray, Love, I kept hearing that the town of Ubud was a global hub of yoga & spirituality. (Elizabeth Gilbert apparently heard that, too.) Feeling deeply in need of both community & healing, I headed to Ubud planning to spend two days, and I ended up staying almost two months.
Among the many inspiring souls I met in Ubud, one woman I befriended was a life coach. We spent an afternoon together on her balcony, and as she described what she did, I felt myself lighting up all over. It sounded like everything I loved about my passion for people and genuinely helping others, but cutting out all the bullshit aspects of sales.
As wild as it may sound, on one balmy, Balinese day I went from hearing the term "life coach" for the first time to feeling an electrifying suspicion that I had found my path, my Ikigai.
Returning home to the U.S. was a bit of a shock, but the transition was eased dramatically by the passion I found in my work. I began training, reading, and resourcing myself with a vigor I’d rarely felt in my studies or sales career.
Each step forward drew me along at a faster pace, like pushing off from the bank of a river into the swift current of deeper water. Any hour I wasn’t coaching, I wanted to be learning how to be a better coach. I dropped any notion of returning to software sales, despite the avid solicitations of recruiters and the promise of a juicy salary. I knew that path led directly back to what I had just left behind.
Coaching is the first career I chose, and the agency I felt left me no path but forward.
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The courage to start anew.
So many of us wake up one morning — or on a sunset bike ride, perhaps — and realize that the small and sometimes passive decisions we’ve made in life have brought us to a place that doesn’t fit. We’re living our own versions of spiritual inflammation. As a CoActive-trained coach, it’s my honor now to help guide clients forward, pursuing the kinds of lives that are so fulfilling, so true, that they wonder if they’re even allowed to be this happy.
Many of my clients first come to me describing a feeling of persistent anxiety. (Relatable!) But when we dig in, there’s always a distinctive source. They’re stuck between two life-changing decisions. Or they can see big-picture what they want for themselves, but they have no idea how to get there. Or one phase of their life has ended (a career, a marriage), and they don’t quite know who they are anymore.
These are badass, ambitious people, and yet they discover that in one way or another, they’re hampering their own progress. They come to coaching with an ownership mindset; ‘I’m the common denominator in my experiences. I’ve got to figure this out to move forward.’
If you see yourself here, I hope we’ll have a chance to work together. You can expect a series of conversations with someone who listens deeply, calls attention to the key discoveries you make, and who can lovingly call you on your BS in a way that gives both of us a good laugh. As a coach, I take the work seriously without taking myself too seriously. “You’re at ease and playful in a serious process,” a client recently told me. “And that ease translates to me.” A good coaching call has just two steps: insight, and action. Our calls cultivate your own inner clarity, insight, and strategic steps forward.
I’ve found that coaching is like increasing the wattage on the spotlight of self-awareness. With a brighter, more focused light, you can see more clearly what has kept you mired in the status quo — and what action is needed to move ahead. When you’re willing to step out of the known and the comfortable, your deeper purpose forms a path in front of you.
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