Where I’ve Been and Why I Do what I Do

My life, today, includes meaningful work, rich relationships, and physical vitality. I enjoy living in southern California where I see the ocean everyday, and frequently immerse myself in the cool waves! I also travel to the mountains in Colorado, and Utah, to enjoy the polarity of nature. I’m constantly involved in intimate, deep conversations with others. I feel fulfilled. I believe that I’m useful and my life is on-purpose.

This was not always my experience. I lived for decades appearing normal, and even ‘successful’ on the outside, but completely unaware and growing miserable inside. In my twenties and early thirties, I found my way to early professional success. For a short time, this felt great. My life looked good on paper with an exciting business career and a huge cast of friends to socialize with. I even had a relationship partner so beautiful that it completed my childhood dream. I naively concluded that I was both brilliant and all powerful. I even began writing a manuscript offering to tell you how to do what I did, as if outside success created interior happiness, and I would give you the key.

Then life got harder. Much harder. Completely unaware of my deep insecurities and self-centeredness, my best thinking—at that time—led to destruction in my relationships, as well as my financial life. After years of inexplicable and embarrassing events, I finally accepted that I had a serious drinking problem. When I started drinking I could not stop, and when I drank it was impossible to predict the direction of my thoughts, and ultimately my behavior. Several times I ended up in hospitals or handcuffs. Countless times I behaved in ways toward others that I never would have without the drink. Yet I was responsible for all of it.

You might not have the same drinking problem, but you might have the same (or similar) thinking problem. My drinking was only the symptom of a deeper issue.

Little did I know that what I thought was so shameful that I stayed in denial for years, was slowly introducing me to a powerful kit of spiritual tools that work in real life. Not just for substance-dependents, but also for people stuck in unhealthy mind patterns including over-thinking and anxiety, participants in mediocre or unhealthy relationships, as well as obsessive behaviors such as gambling, media-consumption, pornography, food, sex, and many others.

After spending years and tens of thousands of dollars attending workshops, retreats and seeing a few therapists, I learned that while the solution included some elements of psychology and emotion health, it had to be grounded in spirituality. But, like many including you perhaps, I questioned a couple things:

What is ‘spirituality’ really?

And, what is ‘a spiritual life?’

I learned that spiritual life was neither the religion I grew up with nor any of the new age practices I’d been experimenting with for almost 20 years. It did include references and elements from some of them, however my biggest awakening was to the fact that a real spiritual life included a power, or a God, personal to me. Not one that books have been written about or that can even be described with words. Rather, one that I could genuinely feel.

I learned that a spiritual life is, very simply, the intentional development of a relationship with a spiritual power, that will help me solve my problems and direct me in my life. I also found, and developed, a simple practice that I call contemplation, prayer, and meditation, or ‘CPM.’

To be clear, I wasn’t looking for a spiritual solution. I selected a spiritual way of life because it’s been the most effective at helping me in the following ways:

• I feel good, overcoming symptoms of anxiety and depression, and returned to the person I like being

• I believe I’m in alignment with the purpose of my life

• My relationships are not only healthy (free of drama, jealousy, and resentment), they are deep and meaningful

As a result of my daily practice, my life has slowly become what it is now. I know what joy and serenity feel like. I experience purposeful ambition, and usefulness to others. These sit where there was once ignorance, pride, denial, fear, and pain.

To conclude, these tools are guideposts for you to develop your own practice, your own connection to a power that you can feel, and to experience the purpose of your life. Nothing inspires me more than to support your process removing the blocks to accessing this power, and help you to discern as you navigate the real world.

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