It's been said that if life were simple we'd all be masters.         

Although our lives are rarely simple, I believe we all have an innate ability to identify and realize what we most yearn for - a life most worth living.  But many of us are stuck in what I've heard described as our 'default' lives - somewhere between OK and a grind, moderately happy and successful, or not. Why is this? Over time, I've come to a few observations. First, we're rarely focused on or even aware of what really matters to us. Not just what we'd like to achieve but WHY we believe these things would be truly satisfying? Do we hold deeper aspirations and hidden possibilities?  Can we reveal pathways towards our truest and most meaningful lives?

Second, we tend to live within a projection of ourselves, as if we're in our own movie - simultaneously serving as screen writer, director, lead actor, casting agent, costumer, and reviewer. Sometimes the outcome is delightful but perhaps more often difficult, painful, and regularly exhausting.  It's complicated and keeps us distracted as we seem to be fulfilling a lifetime studio contract. If the outcomes were everything we hoped for we wouldn’t likely be on this website, interested in coaching or other help-oriented disciplines. But here we are. 

Many of us persist in stoically 'toughing life out', perhaps thinking that working or pressing harder from within our basic life script will lead to different outcomes. That's not my experience.

My experience is that there is much more space within life than we suspect. I think of this as our 'inner awake', our innate space of possibilities, openness, interrelationship, and creativity. This is always accessible when we break through the cocoon of our flickering patterns, emotions, and projections - the movies of our lives. In this 'script-less' heart of awareness we can discern and acknowledge our life worth living. This doesn't solve life. But from this context we can take stock of our resources and experience (everything that has led us to the moment of now) and begin to chart workable paths forward - day by day and from milestone to milestone.

Along my journey I've had much support, exceptional examples, and fearless mentor provocateurs - in love, spirituality, business, community, and now, coaching. Coaching (as both coachee and coach) has played a key role, stimulating remarkable conversations around the powerful questions and deep listening. These are the conversations that provoke us to crack into life beyond our movies.