Know Yourself, and To Yourself Be True

On May 5th, 2022 I looked into the still face of a finished life.

It was shortly after 1pm on a Friday when I heard the last audible sound made by my comatose mother. A groan and a long exhalation drew my attention away from the keyboard, where I was assembling some final words of an obituary. My mother, aged 73, took her final breath after a valiantly fought battle with cancer, drawing to a close my long bedside vigil, and her life as one of the most kind, loving, and resilient people I've known.

With ease, I can close my eyes and in my memory be transported back to specific moments from decades long passed. That one elementary school day when I stood in front of her as she brushed my hair with a Cub Scout hairbrush, licking her hand to better tame the cowlicks. The sights, sounds, and aromas of a woman preparing holiday meals for her family. The touch of her hands as she rubbed Vicks VapoRub on my neck and chest, Wheel of Fortune, the soundtrack. "A new car!"

As easily as those moments from forty or fifty years ago replay themselves in my mind, they vanish and I am transported back to the present, where I look at my surroundings, and wonder where the time went. I think about the things I've learned from life and the accomplishments I've enjoyed. But I also reflect on all the missteps and mistakes. I grieve the moments I knew I was supposed to turn left, but turning right felt more enticing, easier, more rewarding in the short-term at the expense of the long-term that lived in my dreams, but was so easily forsaken for the shallow and fleeting satisfaction, or ease of the moment.

I think about my professional decisions and choices, all of the years that droned on, one after the other, with me fulfilling roles, following soul-crushing orders, and completing mind-numbing tasks out of a sense of responsibility and the gnawing belief that I had no other choices. I can still hear the voices of bosses and supervisors and corporate executives that live only in my nightmares. I can easily recall specific moments in time when the vision for the life I knew I was meant to live invaded every crevice of my heart and mind, bringing me, for a moment, back to life, but was quickly snuffed out with unspoken proclamations. "I want it, but I don't know how." "I'm not really talented enough." "I wish I knew how to get from here to there, but I don't." "I'm trapped." "I'll just keep doing what I have to do because I don't know how to begin doing what I was born to do."

As I looked into my mother's still, quiet, lifeless face I wondered how differently she would live her life, if she had the opportunity to begin again, knowing what she now knows. She wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. Why didn't she? My now deceased father wanted to be an archaeologist. What held him back, sending him to a factory instead?

In 2019, courage prevailed.

After two years of working for one of the most toxic, destructive, and oppressive organizations I'd ever encountered, at the age of 50, I walked out the door for the final time on a glorious May Friday, to commit myself fully to the six-figure business, eventually featured on Business Insider, that I'd spent the last year building in the early morning, late evening, and weekend hours. Though the business I had built was not really aligned with the long-term vision I had for my life, it was a means to an end, a bridge to help me cross the chasm between what I felt I had to do and what I was born to do. I plunged myself into it with courage, abandon, and joy, and from there began creating the outline for the next chapters. These were the chapters that really mattered. These were the chapters that, for far too long, had remained unwritten, the casualty of my unspoken proclamations.

As the cold, winter sun rose on the first day of 2020, everything was falling beautifully into place. That life I had dreamed about, for all of those decades, was now taking on shape and form. This would be the year that I would begin sunsetting the business I had built as a bridge to get me here, and spend the rest of my years being, living, and doing all that I was meant to be, live, and do. In many ways, I still wasn't sure how to get from here to there. I still felt unsure, unprepared, not good enough. But I was determined to succeed or die trying. And my days were filled with hope infused joy.

Forty-five days later, it all fell apart.

A global pandemic was underway, one that directly, and with great devastation, struck a death blow to the core of what I was building. Not only was the outline erased from the pages, but the pages themselves were ripped to shreds and tossed into the wind. And for the next year I endured the darkest, most frightening days and nights I had ever known. Everything I was coming to believe about myself, my future, and my ability to actually live the life I was meant to live, gone. The best parts of me, carried away by the wind, the worst parts of me now emblazoned, in brilliant technicolor, on every corner of my existence. Even the universe itself seemed bent on destroying me. I was done. And I nearly did not survive.

I spent that year just trying to keep breathing. But while I was breathing, I occupied myself with some specific activities. I taught myself video and audio editing. I learned how to create content. And I began jotting down philosophical thoughts about life and work that were rumbling deep inside of me, conceived many years earlier. All of these things came surprisingly, and naturally easy for me despite the dark desperation in my heart and mind.

"Would you be willing to help me?"

That's the question I was asked in the spring of 2021. It was asked by a young man, in my city, who wanted to begin a business like I had back in 2018. His life was not what he wanted it to be, and he felt trapped. We met for lunch. He paid. And I spent an hour or so sharing with him all that I had learned, and all that I believed would help him. A few months later he sent me a message, telling me that I had changed his life, and improved life for his family in ways he didn't know were possible.

I don't know how, or why, but suddenly dozens of people were asking me to help them. Then hundreds. And I just began helping them, mostly for free. As I write this, the number is now over 1,300, who have not only asked me to help them, but have paid me to do so.

I began helping them one-on-one, then in groups, then through content I was producing as the fruit of the things I had taught myself during the dark days, to keep me breathing. I soon began traveling the country, to familiar places I loved, to new places I had wanted to explore, meeting with and helping people. The invitations and requests began coming daily. "Please come to Denver." "Please come to Hawaii and help us." "We have a group in Seattle that wants you to come."

And over the course of twelve months I ended up building a second six-figure business, this one a coaching practice.

This is the good part.

I spent the second half of 2021, through the present, fully engaged in two things: Traveling and helping people.

Remember back in early 2020, the time I told you about when everything was falling beautifully into place for me to be and do what I was meant to be and do? Guess what that plan was? To spend my time traveling and helping people. I have known since the age of 16 that I was supposed to help people. I had bought a travel agency six months before the pandemic began. And my life plan, my passion project, was to build a coaching practice that combined coaching with travel, helping people experience transformation of their personal and professional lives while we journeyed together, as a group, to beautiful places around the world, being furthered transformed by the magic of travel and exploration.

Today the vision is once again alive and growing. I help people begin businesses in the auto industry. I help people start businesses in the travel industry. I help people begin businesses in industries I know nothing about, aside from the the transferable core principles of business development. And I am in the certification process with the Tony Robbins organization to begin helping people as a Strategic Intervention Coach. And once again I am beginning to plan for those transformational journeys.

Don't ask what the world needs.

I discovered a quote, many years ago, from a man named Howard Thurman.

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

When you are considering what to do with your life, and you place your focus on the profit potential found in the the needs of the world, it's very easy to find yourself chasing money through dark, unhappy places that leave you feeling tired, empty, and unfulfilled at the end of the day.

When you take the time to know yourself, to really understand what makes you come alive as the very best version of yourself, then and only then can you begin being who you are meant to be, doing what you are meant to do, and with unrestrained joy begin bringing real change into the world around you as you thrive and flourish.

There's another quote, from Paulo Coelho, that I'll finish this article with, the parenthetical portion inserted by me.

"When you want something (that is aligned with the core truth about who you are meant to be), all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it."