Back when I was in college – we're talking circa 1980 – there was a travel agency in Cambridge that had a huge sign above its door that said, "PLEASE GO AWAY!" As a marketing play, I loved it, it was so clever and cheeky. And look, I've remembered it too!
Allow me to steal that line for this week's newsletter: Please go away. I'm busy doing a thing I ardently love.
I'm hanging with my peeps.
Or to put it more formally, I am conducting the first week of training for the second cohort of Becoming You's certified coaches, 70 of them, hailing from around the world, Ecuador to Dubai, Brooklyn to Saskatchewan. They are, by trade, therapists and teachers, HR leaders and business advisors, and many, of course, are already seasoned coaching practitioners, joining the program to add Becoming You's methodology and assessments to their toolkits. They are young and old, male and female, deeply experienced and eagerly new to this field. |
|
And yet, they all share one burning desire: to bring purpose into the lives of others.
Every day this week, I have stood before this cohort of learners from 9am to 5pm, pouring
|
|
|
|
myself out, and letting myself be filled with their wise and probing questions, their zeal to help others, their unrelenting hope that something as simple and profound as people helping people is the only way forward in this complex and unpredictable world.
One participant in the program intends to bring Becoming You to employees at the $10 billion bank where she's a leader, another yearns to get into her local prison system, as an intervention against recidivism. Yet another participant is a middle-school teacher who sees her students confounded by a future without enough jobs, another counsels young doctors overwhelmed by where they fit into healthcare's changing landscape, and another still builds career paths for adults with autism.
I can't wait to see where each of them takes this work.
Our journey together has just begun; we have five months of monthly sessions to go. But if my joyful, optimism-inducing experience this week is any indication, I may be writing the next newsletter from the ceiling, where I will have levitated.
After which time, I might need to go away, to recover! |
|
NYU had a snow day on Monday after the big storm, but given the distances traveled by our participants, we received permission to gather on campus anyway.
Thus it was that at 7am, I found myself slushing down Lexington Avenue to my subway station. It was quiet out there, but not entirely. Along the way, I came upon a woman with a meowing cat in a carrier slung over her shoulder. She looked confused and unwell. I felt terrible and helpless for her, and you know me, very worried for the cat.
Just then, I saw her spot the entrance to the hospital ER nearby. She noticeably brightened and headed toward it. This felt like a little glimmer of hope – albeit maybe just because I watch The Pitt, where everyone through the door is greeted by their first name and offered a sandwich.
If only. If only.
I don't know what happened next. We rarely do, which is the part that hurts us all, I think. |
|
By the time you read this, I will be on my way to JP Morgan's annual conference in Miami, where for two days every winter, my mind gets blown by the most scary-smart, future-focused, disruptive brains in the world. Indeed, it was at this conference five years ago that I first heard something called AI was going to change everything. The scribbling in my notebook read, "Industrial revolution in scope?" |
|
Well, yes.
I wonder – with excitement, fear, and trepidation – about which eurekas await me this time around. Stay tuned, I will be back. And (surprise) I will opine.
Until then, please don't actually go away.
|
|
|
|
What's coming?
→ May 2026 Three-Day Becoming You Intensive here
|
|
How To Never See Anything The Same Again: Part 1
|
|
What if the places you travel don’t take you far away… but bring you closer to who you actually are? This episode of Becoming You launches a three-part storytelling series about travel—not as escape or travelogue, but as excavation. On this first trip, you will land in Agra, India, at the foot of the Taj Mahal. What unfolds there is not a story about architecture or history, but a reckoning: about love, power, identity, and the value of Belovedness.
|
|
|
|
|
