That tension showed up when I was about to graduate with my MA in Theater and my mentor at school had offered me a part time job teaching acting and Shakespeare to at risk youth in Chicago. My mother had asked a friend of hers to meet with me and offer me a job as a manager of programming at a new Nature Museum.

I wanted nothing more than to give back to the community and inspire people with art using my hard won skills. So, of course, I took the job at the Nature Museum.

My life got a little bit smaller.

These small choices showed up everywhere: career, dating, friendships, even my choices of places to live. Each of them both created and reinforced my core belief that I would never amount to much. That, despite being fairly intelligent and not without talent, my life was destined to be mediocre at best. 

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge that I had a pretty great life. In addition to having the basic privilege of being born white in America, my parents loved and supported me. I got a first rate education, fantastic grades, was able to support myself, had friends. I’d acted on stages in Chicago and Los Angeles, some pretty fancy ones. I had built a reputation as a compelling storyteller at events like The Moth even as I pursued a career in nonprofit management; real save the world kind of stuff. On the outside, it all looked fantastic.

But inside, I felt like a misshapen slug. Unworthy of fulfillment. Unworthy of the life I had built around me. Unworthy of love.

Those are heavy beliefs to carry. And when I hit 35, they brought me to my knees.

I had trouble getting off the couch. My friends, to whom I am forever grateful, came over to clean and cook for me. I ate sweets obsessively and experienced a ton of anger, mostly directed at myself. 

The clinical term for all this is ‘dysthymia,’ or long term, low grade depression that may get deeper over time. Because of how deeply ingrained the beliefs, the stories, driving the depression were, my therapist advised me that healing could take five or ten years.

I’d wanted a life of magic, exploration, creativity and service. Now I looked into the future and saw endless decades of deskbound drudgery and pasta dinners eaten alone over the kitchen sink.

I didn’t have 5 or ten years. I needed to take action now.

So I did the most terrifying thing I’d ever done: I started to make big choices. I quit my job as a financial management consultant for nonprofits and went to South America to work with indigenous healers. And I dove into a breathwork meditation practice. Each choice, each conscious decision, chipped away at the beliefs that had driven my decisions for three decades.

All of which was nice, but it didn’t pay the bills.

About six months after I left my job, a former co-worker invited me to a collaboration dinner with a group of social impact entrepreneurs. One had just collaborated with the White House to develop new models for social impact investing. Another had just written an OpEd in the New York Times. A third had founded a company that gave ex-convicts jobs in electronics recycling.

As each person introduced themselves and their work, I felt a growing sense of unease. What would I say when my turn came? ‘Hi, I’m Michael and I quit my job and now I’m trying to figure stuff out and gosh you all are very impressive!’

My mouth went dry; I took a drink.

My turn came. I opened my mouth and hoped something coherent would come out:

“I’m Michael and I work with amazing people like you and organizations to help them discover and harness the power of story to create change.”

After what felt like an hour, everyone began speaking at once. They all wanted my card (which I didn’t have because I’d just created the business). I told them I’d run out, dashed home, created a website and started figuring out how to be of service using my creativity, imagination, deep curiosity about people, and love of story.

The seed planted in that moment of spontaneous creation took root and has both deepened an expanded over the years.

Working with leaders on their stories naturally led to me to a certification in Executive Coaching and to explore healing modalities like breathwork that work with story on a deeper, somatic level.

A desire to bring deep humanity and a sense of the sacred to organizational storytelling led to an investigation and development of core principles in Ethical Storytelling which have laid the foundation for global conversations and shifts in story-practices.

Facilitating story-work opened doorways to convening design and retreat facilitation, helping craft transformational experiences for leaders and teams.

A desire to deepen my understanding of the larger stories that hold us all invited me to explore initiations and rites of passage, from fasting in the wilderness to walking on coals and exploring myth with elders including Michael Meade and Deena Metzger.

Through all of it, a core question has emerged:

How do we meet the times?

It’s not a question to be answered, but rather to be walked with.

In many ways, the work we do together is an opportunity to walk with the question and see what emerges.