What has changed is my understanding of the role I was asking some of those things to play in my life.
There was a period when professional success did considerably more for me than provide work I enjoyed and the ability to live well. Titles made me feel important, being needed made me feel secure and recognition gave me something external I could point towards when whatever was happening internally felt less certain. None of that made the things I achieved less real, but I eventually had to acknowledge that I was asking achievement to answer questions about me that probably had very little to do with my job.
I began to understand that more clearly when I got sober in 2021. Recovery obviously changed my relationship with alcohol, but the more interesting changes were the ones I hadn’t expected. It forced me to look at how I responded to uncertainty, why I needed to control certain situations, what I expected from other people and how much of my understanding of myself had become attached to things outside me. Some of those characteristics had caused problems, but others had helped me become successful. Often they were the same characteristics, which made separating the useful parts from the less useful ones considerably more complicated than simply deciding I needed to become a different person.
That complexity is probably where most of what I write about now began.
Recovery gave me a framework for thinking about some of those questions, but I quickly became interested in how far the underlying principles extended beyond addiction. Acceptance, honesty, accountability, willingness, reflection and making amends are useful ideas when somebody is rebuilding their life, but I couldn’t see any particularly good reason they should only become relevant once a life needed rebuilding.
That thinking eventually became my first book, 12 Steps to Successful Leadership, which looked at what some of those principles might mean in the workplace. My second, 12 Steps to Success: Finding Your Purpose, took the idea much further, exploring what they might offer anyone trying to understand what matters to them and how they want to live. The 12 Steps to Success podcast grew from the same curiosity, as has much of the writing on this site.
More recently, it has also led me towards coaching. I am currently training as a professional coach, not because I have developed a sudden desire to tell other people what they should do with their lives, but because I have become increasingly interested in the conversations that happen when somebody has the space to question their own assumptions about work, identity, success and what they want next. Writing allows me to explore those questions from my perspective. Coaching asks me to get out of the way and help somebody explore them from theirs.
I don’t think there is a final version of any of us waiting to be uncovered if we ask enough questions. My own life certainly hasn’t worked that way. There are things I understand differently now than I did five years ago, and I would be slightly disappointed if another five years didn’t change some of them again. What interests me is how we continue to build lives around people who are still changing, particularly when there may be absolutely nothing wrong with the lives we have already built.
I am still a music executive. I am also a writer, author, podcaster and increasingly a coach. None of those identities explains all of me, which is probably part of the point.
