I recently sat down and wrote out in as much specific, gritty detail the exact person I want to help with my coaching and facilitation practice. And like any piece of honest writing, parts of my story are in there. Actually a lot of my story is in here, along with stories of the people I’ve helped over the past 5 years.
The person I want to help lives in a city. Their pulse matches its rhythm and energy. The work they do is a big part of their identity. It’s probably the reason they moved to the city and the motivation behind why and how they move through the world.
They care about their work. They read books and listen to podcasts around productivity, purpose, and alignment because they want their work to be satisfying and meaningful. They want to feel aligned in what they do. They want to do better, to do more, to live a life of greater alignment and intention. They want things to be different than what they saw growing up.
They may have been raised in a conservative household or environment that prioritized safety over risk. Their view of the world was narrow because certainty was prized over mystery. They were raised within a rigid, mythic belief system; a framework of dualism that defined what was right and wrong, good and bad, us and them. They were given a map of life that had clear boundaries and expectations.
For some, they followed the rules perfectly and were accepted. For others, they couldn’t follow them at all and were shunned. For many, they learned to survive by creating a hollow, filtered version of themselves to fit the mold.
Being practical meant being responsible. Being creative meant being unserious.
They grew up feeling like they didn’t belong anywhere. So they became very skilled at filtering themselves and playing the part, and they became successful within those systems and reaped the external rewards of approval, money, and status. But now, as they approach their 30s or 40s, they are facing a crisis—a crisis of purpose: “What’s the point of all this?” and a crisis of desire: “Is this what I really want? What do I even want?” Their life has run away from them.
They are beginning to realize that much of what they built toward no longer holds meaning. They were raised to believe in a guarantee, a promise of safety and success if they followed the rules, but that promise has betrayed them. The world has changed too much for that promise to come true, and they have changed too much to even want it anymore. They feel bait and switched.
And while they want something different, they are still under the weight of the old programming. Layers of external expectations and internalized stories are crusting over their intuition and desires.
They were taught to distrust their inner strength and intuition. They learned that truth, beauty, and goodness existed outside of them rather than within. This was reinforced through religion, capitalism, culture, and social groups, deepening their disconnection from themselves.
They have become disembodied, dissociated from their emotions, pushing through life with intellect and control rather than presence and connection. They are caught in their head. They are over-indexed on logic and reason, stuck in a cycle of overthinking rather than feeling.
They are struggling to know what they want, who they are, and how to express themselves in an authentic way. They feel disconnected from themselves, from their sense of presence. They are addicted to outcomes, external validation, and a linear story that’s become winding and messy.
But they still search for something more. The pain of reckoning and uncertainty is less than the pain of staying the way they are. They want to reconnect with their intuition, to rebuild that trust, to reclaim their innate wholeness. They are seeking guides to help them find themselves, understand themselves, and live from a place of authentic presence.
They are ready to uncover and explore who they are beneath all the layers of control and performance.
They are deeply longing to be seen and heard for who they are. They long to be accepted for who they are. To feel grounded and safe in themselves and in the present moment. To let go and surrender to possibility, to something greater than themselves, and trust in its unconditional love for them.
These are the people I want to help.
The ones who are ready to peel back the layers, to sit in the liminality and rediscover the truth, beauty, and goodness that have always been within them. They are ready to live from their innate wholeness, to lead with love, and to show up in their lives with authenticity and grace.