What’s Calling to be Created through You?

Last week, when I wrote about creating in 2025, there were a couple of lines I added that at the time felt like a throwaway—

When you get out of the way, it might feel like something is calling you to be created. Or that something is wanting to emerge through you. Honor that.

What if this is actually the highest form of creating?

I realized that I could have and should have said more—much more—about these two lines.

That a newsletter was calling to emerge just on this.

It’s a path I’m familiar with.

You, on Purpose

There are a lot of ways to create in the world.

Yes, you can create something to make money, whether a profession, a career, or a business.

Yes, you can create something because it brings you joy—simply because it is fun to create it.

These ways of creating might feel a bit difficult at first, but they get easier. And more fun.

But they aren’t always the path to fulfillment.

Sometimes, it feels like life is calling on you to create something that you don’t want to do. That you resist doing. That feels too big or scary. That you have no idea how you could possibly do it.

In August 2016 this happened to me. And as I face my 60th birthday, a bit less than a month from now, I want to share more about that journey. I want to share why I’m so happy that I trusted my instincts and, at least after some initial resistance, took the leap.

And I want to suggest that something might be calling you, too, if you get quiet enough to hear it.

A Calling or a Fantasy?

I’ve been on a self-improvement journey in one form or another since at least the 1980s. I began a decades-long meditation practice in 1996. I started going on retreats and working with spiritual teachers in 2005. But I didn’t discover coaching as an occupation until 2008.

I didn’t seriously consider it as a potential occupation for me until about 2014. Though I did tinker with trying to get some clients on this side along the way.

Even when I was laid off from my last corporate role in 2016, it never occurred to me that I could match my prior salary working as a coach.

It seemed totally impractical, a pipe dream.

But it’s happened.

Because even though it was frustrating and difficult, there was something in me that was determined to make it work.

To reeducate a network of people who thought of me as a lawyer and consultant and health care expert.

To retrain myself on working on the self (both mine and others), something ultimately impossible to understand, rather than the skills and strategies and content that I did know.

To slowly build a business that has grown every year and that now well exceeds my prior salary.

When I started I had never had a paying coaching client, let alone worked with a founder. Today, founders and CEOs pay me six figures to work with me.

How does this happen?

The Most Powerful Commitment

One of my coaches along the way, John Patrick Morgan , said something that continues to inspire me—

“The most powerful commitments are the ones that you have no idea how to fulfill.”

My experience has taught me something even more compelling—

If you really want to create something, the universe, which somehow planted that seed in you, will also guide you in how to create it.

You can call it whatever you want. Whatever works for you. Your gut, intuition, guidance, angels, God.

But there is something that, when we get out of the way, shows up to help us.

Within your desire is hidden the means to achieve it.

For the first several months of my new coaching venture, I thought I was committed. But I am now convinced that one other thing was necessary for that commitment to be absolute.

Burning the Bridges

When I was working in the corporate world, I was living in Chicago and then later Washington DC. And I commuted to Boston for about six years, too.

Big cites with lots of traditional employment opportunities. And lots of fallback options when I was initially thinking about coaching from 2010 to 2012.

Those options were keeping me from fully committing to coaching.

One of those options turned into my last corporate job.

But things changed when we moved from Washington DC to Carbondale CO, a small mountain town near Aspen, in July of 2017.

There are no positions here that are anything like what I had access to in my old world.

Suddenly, the fallback was gone. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

A Willingness to Be Curious and Change Course

When I first got laid off, I thought I’d be a consultant.

Maybe I could coach part time, a good friend suggested, while building a consulting business.

I was known as a health care expert. I was confident that I could make it work there while I built my coaching chops.

But no one wanted to hire me as a consultant.

Even though I did get some interest from potential employers, I didn’t pursue them. I knew deep in my bones that my next thing was on my own.

I attended a coaching intensive a month after getting laid off. I hired my first coach, Rich Litvin, a few months after that. I did a lot of things differently than others were, because they felt right to me. I never coached for an hourly fee, instead waiting for more substantial engagements.

My first client was a senior executive who hired me in June of 2017. With some breaks, we worked together four years.

My first founder was a referral in late 2018 and we worked till the middle of 2023.

My second came shortly after and we worked through the sale of his company.

Even though I have coached some great senior executives along the way, there was something about founders, about their capacity to look deeply at themselves, to take risks, and to apply themselves over a period of years, that resonated with me.

Perhaps because, looking back, that has been my path, too.

I’ve moved from coaching executives to coaching founders to coaching second time founders to coaching people who have had exits and are wondering what is next. Not by design, but simply because that is where the path seems to have led me and that has been my clients journey, too.

I never planned any of it. (In fact, a lot of the stuff I thought would work failed miserably. That’s a whole different newsletter.)

What is Calling You?

As you look at a new year, maybe there has been something that has been calling you. With a quiet, but insistent voice that, to this point, you’ve been ignoring.

Maybe you tell it “someday,” or, “it’s just not practical right now” or, “it’s too risky.“ Maybe you ask yourself, “Who am I to think I could do that?”

Every day that passes without taking action, a little part of you dies.

Maybe you want to pursue a different career or start a business.

Maybe you’re already running a business, but you can’t quite seem create the next version even though the thrill is gone with this one.

Maybe you’ve sold a business and have no idea what is next for you.

Get quiet. Give yourself some space. And see what emerges.

Continuing the Conversation

One of the things I’m creating in 2025 is more opportunities for both individuals and small groups to spend time in that space where dreams emerge.

Watch this newsletter for more, and reach out in the meantime if you’d like to talk.

I’m creating a special email list just for this project and would love to include you.