LIFE

This article reflects on the chapter of my life and the plans I discussed in Episode 530, recorded at the end of 2024.

There is something incredible about coming full circle and seeing how far you have come.

I was back in El Dorado Hills, staying at the hotel where I held my first live certification. There were ten people at that first training. Eventually, we were teaching and training thousands.

Walking around the little pond nearby, I was thinking about everything that had happened since that beginning. My son Christian was starting his career as a professional golfer. I was completing a chapter of my own.

After ten and a half years of podcasting and eight years of Scholars and Get Coached, I felt pride, love, and accomplishment. I also felt the emotion of an ending.

The contribution we made together

The outpouring of love from my students was humbling.

They told me about changed jobs, businesses they had started, relationships they had healed, and the lives they had created using these tools.

Most had found me through the podcast. We had been going on walks together every Thursday, connected through changes in their lives, even though many of us had never met.

A friend who had worked for me laughed when I started telling her about myself. She explained that she had been in a relationship with me for a long time, even though I had not been in a relationship directly with her.

I understood. I have felt that intimacy with my own teachers and mentors whom I have never met.

To see my students creating their work in the world, some on their way to surpassing me, felt extraordinary. Many were ready to move from student to leader.

When your ambition changes

For much of my career, I had a familiar way of creating.

I would wake up and read for about an hour, go on a walk listening to an audiobook, and then come back to journal, take notes, and develop ideas.

Whenever I faced a challenge or wanted to change something in my life, I studied it. I applied what I learned and created tools to help you make similar changes.

That process produced books, classes, presentations, and this podcast. I loved creating new concepts and sharing them as soon as I could.

Around the time I turned fifty, I noticed my desire changing.

Many things happened together: my divorce, my children leaving for college, moving out of our family home, and an extraordinarily successful period in my business.

I was spending more time on the business and less time voraciously reading and creating. At first, I thought I needed to get back to my old process. But the desire itself was different.

From new ideas to practiced wisdom

Arthur Brooks's book about moving from strength to strength helped me understand that change.

His discussion of fluid and crystallized intelligence offered a concept that resonated with me: moving from the energy of generating new ideas toward the wisdom of accumulated experience.

That description felt right.

I had twenty years of my own references, tools, and thousands of hours of coaching. The work was no longer only a new concept I had just invented and wanted to try.

It was practiced wisdom.

As I continued teaching and coaching, I felt my teaching getting better. I could draw on years of applying the tools and seeing students use them in their lives.

The energy was different, too. It was more patient and thoughtful. I did not feel the same urgency to create something and get it to you immediately.

I wanted to refine the work.

Bringing a life's work together

At the end of 2024, I described a project I wanted to call Life.

My vision was to bring together the podcasts, lectures, courses, live events, and what I had learned from certifying coaches into a cohesive course.

Certified coaches had received the material in a more linear way through certification. Many other students had learned alongside me over years, taking separate classes and listening as new concepts developed.

I wanted to explore what it would mean to organize that knowledge into one integrated learning experience.

I was excited about using AI to help organize my existing material, and about working with curriculum experts and graphic artists to make it easier to consume and apply.

It felt like I had been making nourishing food that had gotten us through. Now I wanted to make a more refined dish.

This was the project I envisioned spending 2025 creating, with a planned course in 2026. Those were the plans I shared in this episode, rather than a statement about what is available today.

The experience of being alive

The course I imagined would bring together the important pieces of an adult life.

Understanding circumstances: what they mean to you and how much they matter.

Understanding your thinking: the profound skill of being conscious of your own mind and thinking about your thoughts.

Understanding feelings as the experience of being alive, including the balance of positive and negative emotion.

Understanding behavior: why we do things we do not want to do, and why we do not do things we most want to do.

Our actions can lead us toward who we want to be or away from ourselves. I wanted to explore that deeply, along with the results we could create, our relationships, and our evolution and contribution.

What can you do now?

Another book that influenced this chapter was Die With Zero.

It helped me refine a question: What can I do now that I will not be able to do in ten years?

For me, one answer was spending time with my adult children before they had families of their own and became more wrapped up in those lives.

I had spent the summer touring Canada with Christian. I wanted to attend as many of his golf rounds as possible and watch him live his dream.

I also wanted to travel with Connor and be present with him.

I had the ability to choose that time because of how hard I had worked while they were children. There was nothing I would rather do.

This next chapter included quieter space to refine my work and more time with my sons. I planned to continue sharing through the podcast, with a different rhythm.

I could feel the accomplishment of what we had created and the excitement of what was ahead. My desire had changed, and I was ready to follow it.