I left a long, successful, and secure academic career without any plan at all. Several things converged, including: Rising dissatisfaction–the work was feeling increasingly stale and unfulfilling; Covid, which made my job extremely difficult; and the untimely deaths of some friends, colleagues, and family.

I began to realize in a visceral way just how short life really is. I was tired of settling for “good enough.” I left and never looked back.

Among many other things, I worked with a master coach and completed rigorous and intensive training programs to learn how to transform my own life and help others transform theirs.

Along the way I repeatedly discovered that although they may be very good at hiding it, deep inside, many seemingly high functioning, successful people are in fact hurting, or at least unhappy.

“I’ve got nothing to complain about,” they might say. “Look how much worse things are for so many others!” 

I’ve been saying this myself for most of my life. I still do. And it’s true. And it’s a poor excuse to avoid taking an honest look in the mirror, trying to find and do the best work we can, be our highest and best self, and live our best life. 

I would love the chance to learn more about how you want to spend your one wild and precious life, and what might be holding you back from seeing and doing this. If you’ve made it this far, I suspect that we might have at least a few things in common, and if nothing else, we would probably be able to have a pretty real and interesting conversation.