My Journey

I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana and now live in Los Angeles, California. For over 14 years I worked in film as a writer and producer — the kind of career that looks stable from the outside and feels like nothing but uncertainty from the inside.

In May 2018, it caught up with me. I'd been depressed for most of my life without ever fully admitting it — I just kept looking outside myself for proof I was worth something: achievement, approval, the next project, whatever I could find. I'd just finished producing a movie and had nothing to do but wait and wonder how it would land, and with nowhere left to point that energy, I became — there's really no better way to say it — an anxiety-filled dumpster fire of a person. I drank, I smoked, I lost my appetite and lost track of who I was.

My family noticed before I let myself admit it. That's when I decided to actually get to work on myself instead of just surviving another week — to stop numbing the pain and start asking why I felt it in the first place. Why do I think this way? Why do I keep doing this? That question turned out to be the whole job, and it still is.

I read everything I could — stoicism, psychology, breathing, meditation. I journaled daily and got honest with myself for the first time in years. Slowly, the practice of befriending my demons instead of fighting them became a book: The Sh!t They Don't Teach You in School, which debuted as an Amazon #1 Best Seller. Now I coach people through the same process, using the same tools — because I'm not done with the work either. I still fail at plenty of what I wrote about. I just don't let that stop me from doing it again.

Transformation begins within us, and when we're all doing our part, we grow stronger together.