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When I started interviewing coaches before deciding to become one, I was struck by the fact that virtually every one of them had transitioned from another career. And it was interesting to see how they integrated or leveraged their experience into this new field of coaching. This validated my own intuition.
My prior career was as a secondary school English teacher, where I started one of the best high school literary magazines in the country where students interviewed Pulitzer prize winning authors and the like. My students even conducted Maya Angelou’s last recorded interview before she passed away. I’ve also taught the works of James Joyce – an author I’ve presented and been published on internationally – to my students. I even published a well-reviewed book on teaching the enigmatic Joyce’s works in secondary school, based on the success I had making it accessible to these adolescents.
The intersection between my love of language, teaching, and my sense of purpose had me constantly coming back to that classic Henry David Thoreau quote from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Despite all I had done with my students, my way of teaching was unorthodox and didn’t fit the status quo of prescribed curriculum and standardized assessments. My students’ test scores were great, so I was left alone, but certainly not encouraged. I was branded as “rogue” and looked at as an anomaly: a great teacher, but too unconventional. For all of my success, I knew I was being held back from my fullest potential and I couldn’t stand being a superfluous cog in a system that perpetually devalued education and true learning in the annual pursuit of churning out dubiously prepared graduates. I wanted to make a greater impact on people in a way that also brought more fulfillment to my life.
I wanted to help the people like me. It didn’t matter what field they were in. They might be the misfits, the rogues, those gifted individuals whose unique perspectives were a source of untapped potential. Or perhaps they were paralyzed with indecision, unsatisfied in their careers, or so focused on the short-term they had lost sight of what really mattered to them.
Executive coaching had been speaking to me for years, as it was what my father did. But, like most young men I pushed away the idea of following too closely in my father’s footsteps. However, I couldn’t deny it was a profession that called to me and tapped into my skills, passion, and experience in a way that turned my “rogue” spirit into an advantage, not a liability. And so, I trained with the Co-Active Institute as well as MasterCoaches and Positive Intelligence to fill in the missing gaps. And naturally I continue my pursuit of lifelong learning.
One evening, while coaching one of my early clients, I had an experience that changed me as much as it changed her (what a mentor had shared as a sign of masterful coaching). She was a client from Brazil who was living in another country thousands of miles from her family, out of work, and awaiting her VISA status felt like everything was out of her control and unpredictable. She cried, tears of homesickness and uncertainty falling down her cheeks. I listened, heartbroken, holding the space for her. She said her emotions felt like a sting.
When the moment fell silent, my intuition kicked in by what she was telling me both with her words and body language. To pull her out of her thinking mind for a moment and take her to a 30,000 foot view of the situation, I asked her what she was going to have for dinner Thursday.
The simple question caught her off-guard and with a brief smile, of course, she had no idea. The realization that daily impermanence surrounds us, almost like a blanket, settled on her. Having resurfaced for fresh air, we dove back in and discussed how she could only feel that strongly about something she truly cared for: her family, her professional passion, her place in the world – both geographically and metaphorically.
Her sense of saudade, a Portuguese word meaning nostalgia for something she may never have again, was not merely an emotional quicksand; it was a badge of vulnerability signaling that she had tapped into something that truly mattered in her life. She looked me in the eyes – still watery, yet now unflinching – and said, “I hope it stings every time.”
This is my purpose. My fulfillment comes from helping those rogues, lost wanderers, the paralyzed professionals, and anyone who senses that they are not living into their full potential, and yearn to live a life with no regrets. This could be coaching one-on-one or in groups. As an English teacher, writer, and editor, I knew the power of language in how it both reveals how we see the world and navigate our way through it. By integrating my unique narrative linguistic style with the other tools of this remarkable profession I’m able to help my clients explore their unconscious narratives to uncover where their lost potential is and how to take authorship, rewriting the story they were always meant to live.
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
— George Bernard Shaw
My prior career was as a secondary school English teacher, where I started one of the best high school literary magazines in the country where students interviewed Pulitzer prize winning authors and the like. My students even conducted Maya Angelou’s last recorded interview before she passed away. I’ve also taught the works of James Joyce – an author I’ve presented and been published on internationally – to my students. I even published a well-reviewed book on teaching the enigmatic Joyce’s works in secondary school, based on the success I had making it accessible to these adolescents.
The intersection between my love of language, teaching, and my sense of purpose had me constantly coming back to that classic Henry David Thoreau quote from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Despite all I had done with my students, my way of teaching was unorthodox and didn’t fit the status quo of prescribed curriculum and standardized assessments. My students’ test scores were great, so I was left alone, but certainly not encouraged. I was branded as “rogue” and looked at as an anomaly: a great teacher, but too unconventional. For all of my success, I knew I was being held back from my fullest potential and I couldn’t stand being a superfluous cog in a system that perpetually devalued education and true learning in the annual pursuit of churning out dubiously prepared graduates. I wanted to make a greater impact on people in a way that also brought more fulfillment to my life.
I wanted to help the people like me. It didn’t matter what field they were in. They might be the misfits, the rogues, those gifted individuals whose unique perspectives were a source of untapped potential. Or perhaps they were paralyzed with indecision, unsatisfied in their careers, or so focused on the short-term they had lost sight of what really mattered to them.
Executive coaching had been speaking to me for years, as it was what my father did. But, like most young men I pushed away the idea of following too closely in my father’s footsteps. However, I couldn’t deny it was a profession that called to me and tapped into my skills, passion, and experience in a way that turned my “rogue” spirit into an advantage, not a liability. And so, I trained with the Co-Active Institute as well as MasterCoaches and Positive Intelligence to fill in the missing gaps. And naturally I continue my pursuit of lifelong learning.
One evening, while coaching one of my early clients, I had an experience that changed me as much as it changed her (what a mentor had shared as a sign of masterful coaching). She was a client from Brazil who was living in another country thousands of miles from her family, out of work, and awaiting her VISA status felt like everything was out of her control and unpredictable. She cried, tears of homesickness and uncertainty falling down her cheeks. I listened, heartbroken, holding the space for her. She said her emotions felt like a sting.
When the moment fell silent, my intuition kicked in by what she was telling me both with her words and body language. To pull her out of her thinking mind for a moment and take her to a 30,000 foot view of the situation, I asked her what she was going to have for dinner Thursday.
The simple question caught her off-guard and with a brief smile, of course, she had no idea. The realization that daily impermanence surrounds us, almost like a blanket, settled on her. Having resurfaced for fresh air, we dove back in and discussed how she could only feel that strongly about something she truly cared for: her family, her professional passion, her place in the world – both geographically and metaphorically.
Her sense of saudade, a Portuguese word meaning nostalgia for something she may never have again, was not merely an emotional quicksand; it was a badge of vulnerability signaling that she had tapped into something that truly mattered in her life. She looked me in the eyes – still watery, yet now unflinching – and said, “I hope it stings every time.”
This is my purpose. My fulfillment comes from helping those rogues, lost wanderers, the paralyzed professionals, and anyone who senses that they are not living into their full potential, and yearn to live a life with no regrets. This could be coaching one-on-one or in groups. As an English teacher, writer, and editor, I knew the power of language in how it both reveals how we see the world and navigate our way through it. By integrating my unique narrative linguistic style with the other tools of this remarkable profession I’m able to help my clients explore their unconscious narratives to uncover where their lost potential is and how to take authorship, rewriting the story they were always meant to live.
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Where We Coach
There is a popular Sufi parable which says so much about why we move forward without making progress in our lives. We search for solutions to our problems in what is known as opposed to exploring the unknown.
An old man was walking home late one night when he saw a friend on his knees under a street light, searching for something. "What are you doing?" he asked his friend.
"I dropped the key to my house."
"I'll help you look." After a few minutes of frustrated searching, the old man asked, "Where exactly were you when you dropped this key?"
His friend pointed toward the darkness. "Over there."
"Then why are you looking for it here?"
"Because this is where the light is."
An old man was walking home late one night when he saw a friend on his knees under a street light, searching for something. "What are you doing?" he asked his friend.
"I dropped the key to my house."
"I'll help you look." After a few minutes of frustrated searching, the old man asked, "Where exactly were you when you dropped this key?"
His friend pointed toward the darkness. "Over there."
"Then why are you looking for it here?"
"Because this is where the light is."
