In 2014 I started writing to a small mailing list about the things I was struggling with and how I planned to get out of them. I called it HighLifer, and for a while it was a place to think out loud about confidence, decisions, and the gap between the life I had and the one I thought I was supposed to have. People wrote back. Some of them asked if we could talk. That is how the coaching began. I then transitioned from a role as a software developer to an Agile Coach role where I worked with teams and organisations to help them change the way in which they were holding work and life.
For years the work was about getting somewhere: a clearer plan, a bigger goal, a bolder step, a better version of the person doing the stepping. It helped. It also kept circling back to the same question, in me and in the people I sat with. Who is the one who feels stuck? Who is the one who wants to be better? When we looked at that directly, the plans tended to sort themselves out. I realized that the self was constructed. So the work turned toward self-inquiry.
In 2021, I had a sudden realization that these self-constructed narratives were what made life uncomfortable for all of us. We were so attached to things we liked, built an aversion for things we didn't like, and all the while life was passing us by. In dealing with my conditioning, I found passion in helping others do the same.
I still coach, and I still ask a lot of questions. The difference is where the questions point. They point inward, at the one who is suffering, and they stay there long enough for something to be seen.
Alongside the coaching (and coaching in corporate as a paid gig), I paint, I write essays, make music, create magic illusions, and I host a small weekly meditation gathering. The contemplative traditions have shaped how I sit with people more than any method has.
For the record, my training runs through several coaching certifications (ICF, ICA amongst others), hypnotherapy, NLP, Integral Coaching, and two decades of helping teams and organisations change. I mention it so you know it's there. I don't begin with any of it. I begin with what's happening. And what's happening is right here, right now.