I grew up in a family of scientists and doctors, and followed that path myself, first as a scientist managing a biomechanics lab, then into product management in the medical device industry. By my early thirties, my identity was built on two things: my career, and being married with a child. I wasn't consciously chasing success, I was just trying to do good work and be loved by my peers and my wife.

In 2012, a bike accident changed all of that. In the years that followed, both pillars of my identity fell apart; my marriage ended, and my career unraveled, both as indirect consequences of that day. Around the same time, I watched both of my parents become sick with terminal illnesses and pass away. I remarried, hoping to feel loved again, but that marriage lasted only a short time. I moved through repeated periods of unemployment as I tried to figure out who I was becoming. And then, in the middle of all of it, a second major bike accident put me back in the hospital.

I share this not for sympathy, but because it's the reason I do this work. I didn't just study identity change intellectually, I had to recreate my identity multiple times, from the ground up, again and again. Mindfulness practice, and a decision to meet each loss with radical acceptance and gratitude rather than collapse, became the thread that carried me through. Somewhere in that process, I shifted from a life organized around accomplishment to one organized around contribution. That shift is what led me to leave corporate healthcare and become a full-time coach.

If you want the fuller, unedited version of this story, I've told it across several episodes of my podcast, Stories on Purpose, especially Episode 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts).