They say, don't meet your heroes. They lie.

The true story of how this whole thing started...

They say, don’t meet your heroes. They lie. 

For more than a dozen years, I’ve hosted the Good Life Project^® podcast. I still can't fathom how it’s grown into one of the biggest, longest-running shows in the world, but I’m grateful for the community, and my big-hearted and wise team.

Along the way, I’ve had the stunning opportunity to spend time with everyone from Anne Lamott, Brené Brown, and James McBride to Peter Frampton, Macy Gray, Matthew McConaughey and more than 900 others who’ve been knighted, won Nobels, Pulitzers, Oscars and Grammys, made world-changing scientific breakthroughs and led social change. Every one was, and is, my teacher. Every conversation, a gift.

But, it was one conversation, nearly a decade ago, that led to a friendship that in no small way, led to me to launch this new home for collective creativity, self-discovery and conversation. And started the journey back home to myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert and I first met in this storied, one-room recording studio in Manhattan. It was owned by a super-chill composer who played lead guitar for Suzanne Vega in the ‘80s. Those golden records on the wall behind us were from his work on her famed Solitude Standing album that features Tom’s Diner and Luka.

On the surface, we were there to explore ideas from her book, Big Magic, which we did. But, minutes in, I knew this was a conversation that would keep unfolding between us over a period of years. Don’t ask me how, but in post-production we discovered that Liz actually giggled at the rate of one-laugh-per-minute, which revealed so much and cracked us up in a later conversation.

But, it was last year’s launch of Liz’s

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

project that set the wheels in motion for Awake @ the Wheel.

For more than two-decades, I’ve been called by a question.

How do we use our time well?

The seed was planted on 9-11 when a friend went to work, and never came home. It brought home a simple truth. We are made no promises. Whatever time we have, we need to use it well.

So many of us haven fallen asleep at the wheel of our own lives. Me, included. Have, in the past. Will, again. Because I’m human, just like you. Fumbling and stumbling, trying to see more clearly, connect more deeply, and grow more alive through the joyful calamity of it all.

That opening question began to branch.

• What do I want?

• What’s worth wanting?

• How do I wake up to what is real, then work with it? 

• And, how do we continually make the journey from our heads back into our bodies and hearts? To live a life of not just intellectualizing (and overthinking), but feeling? And, loving? And being?

As Liz reminded me, when you live your life from a place of curiosity, the very act of being becomes a work of art. For me, writing books, producing media, crafting conversations and community, building companies, have been big parts the quest. To learn. To convene. To create. To share. 

But, over time, I began to realize I’d spent so many years conjuring offerings from the head that the part of me that yearned to be centered in this process—the emotional, evocative, feeling and sensing core—had all but died.

Still, as Miracle Max in The Princess Bride proclaimed when asked if the Dread Pirate Roberts had departed, that part of me was only “mostly dead.” 

Time for a change.

An email from Liz a few months ago was the nudge I needed. She invited me to do something that, frankly, terrified me. But in exactly the way I needed to be shook. She asked me to share my own Letter From Love with her wonderful community. At first, I tried to think it into existence. I’ve been noodling on it, I told her.

Didn’t work. She reminded me get out of my head and just ask love to speak to and through me, and capture what came. Make it a daily practice. I did. It poured out, heart-thumping, hand shaking. 

You can read (and hear me speak it) over at Liz’s place here. And, listen to us exploring the process on the Good Life Project podcast in your favorite podcast app here.

Or listen below:

As I wrote, something else unlocked. It was time to let that weird, vulnerable, “I see the world differently,” part of me out again. So, two years after “reserving my name” on Substack but never doing anything with it, Awake @ the Wheel was born.

It’s about how we do this thing called humaning. Together. A nod to the fact that life is uncertain, sometimes amazing, other times brutal, some of it known and knowable, much of it mysterious and mystical, little of it plannable, much of it funny, and none of it promised. The only way to find a thread of peace and ease is to acknowledge it all. To become awake at the wheel of our lives.

What will you get as a free subscriber?

Every week, you’ll get the Awake @ the Wheel newsletter, featuring a topic that relates to the how we keep saying yes to waking up in our lives, brought to life through a story (or terrible poem), and a simple “journal and jam” prompt. A question or two to reflect upon, to live into, walk with, then write about and, if you’re inclined, invite a friend to talk or “jam” about.

It’s an opportunity to begin the process of coming alive, one journal and jam prompt at a time, with the intention of helping you feel more deeply connected to yourself and those around you. And, if no easy jam partner comes to mind, well, share in the comments, or wherever else feels good and safe to you.

More alive, less alone. That’s our mantra.

These open-to-all offerings will also help you get to know my voice, my mind, my heart, so you can see if you want to come along for a bigger, more joyful and connected ride as a full access member of the community.

If you want to go deeper and come along on this amazing adventure…

Here’s where I invite you into the passenger seat as we head out on a shared journey to wake up at the wheel of our lives in a more fun, interactive and engaged way.

Saying yes to the weekly awaken your life journal and jam newsletters is a wonderful practice, and a great way to begin. But there are so many more places for us to go together. So many more opportunities to feel more alive and less alone.

When you become a full access paid subscriber, for the price of a single (semi-bougie, alternative milk) latte a month, in addition to the weekly newsletter and journal and jam prompts, you’ll unlock:

• Invitations to our monthly Awake @ the Wheel Community Jams, with guided visualizations/meditations, fun guests, and time to drop into creative and soulful live-journaling and all-hands conversations.

• Access to periodic virtual Wake & Make workshops and conversations, where I sit down with incredible teachers, makers, spiritual teachers, and creators to explore the intersection between life, love, work, expression, craft, and coming alive and, often explore fun new ideas and experiences to help unlock more meaning, purpose, curiosity and creativity.

• The ability to share thoughts and comments (we keep this community space for full-access members only, because it helps ensure a more sacred and safe space than the free-for-all of public comment sections).

• Access to additional writing, and the occasional video check-ins, and audio dispatches, often from the trail as I hike and share from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains here in Boulder, Colorado. Keep an eye out for bears, bobcats, elk, and the occasional bernadoodle.

• A way to say thank you, to support this work, and help grow this space, so I can spend more time, go deeper, and give you even more.

This is all available to you instantly, as a full-access paid subscriber, just click below to unlock everything now.

About Me

I’m the dad of a daughter whose every move beats my heart (I generally don’t post photos, because that’s her life and story to tell). The husband of a woman who has blessed every breath I’ve taken for over 30 years. And, I’m a Maker, I live to love, and to create. 

At various times, I’ve made my bones as a lawyer, multi-time founder, yoga teacher, personal trainer, blogger, educator, podcaster, speaker, executive producer, and writer.

Along what’s sometimes felt like a wildly-jagged professional path, I’ve investigated insider-trading as an enforcement attorney for the SEC, fumbled my way through mega-deals at a big-firm in NYC, then “threw it all away” to make $12/hour as a personal trainer and learn the lifestyle business from the ground-up. Soon after, I opened my own fitness facility. Our ethos was “do the opposite of convention.” To everyone’s amazement (mine, included), we thrived. I eventually sold my interest, and took time to start following a creative impulse to write. And, break all the rules I’d learned as a lawyer.

A year later, in the shadow of 9-11, having self-published my first “alleged” book, I found myself deepening into Eastern thought and movement. Opened a yoga studio in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, then spent the next 7 years breathing, moving, studying, and guiding thousands, training hundreds of teachers from around the world, and building community.

All of it, from my time taking depositions under the cover of secrecy in a windowless, cinderblock government box to bringing students out of Savasana after 90-minutes of sweaty collective effervescence, was a PhD in the human condition. In what makes us tick, or not. In how we see and believe and act, both when around others, and, more interestingly, when we think no one’s looking. In how we meet and make our worlds. And what inner and outer rules guide the pursuit.

This all led me back to writing, where, in 2008, I was fortunate enough to write a book for Crown (Career Renegade), followed over the years by others with Portfolio (Uncertainty), Hay House (How to Live a Good Life), and HarperCollins (SPARKED). And, another that has a single copy in print, and will remain a mystery to all but one of two humans who hold my heart, and will for life. All of which launched me into the world of public speaking, and along with our team, gathering community for a wonderful series of retreats, events, programs and even a five-year stint running an adult summer-camp that reconnected thousands of attendees to what it means to drop the facade, reconnect to meaning, play and joy, and come back to life.

In 2012, we launched the Good Life Project® podcast and community, never imaging it’d last as long as it has, grow into what it’s become, and be a source of learning, expression and connection on a level I never knew was possible.

Over time, I began to develop a deep fascination with the world of work, and how to make it better. So, I launched a research initiative that developed the Sparketype® Assessment, a simple, freely-available tool that identifies the essence of work that makes you come alive. As we head toward a million people having completed this assessment, generating approximately 50-million data-points, it’s grown into one of the largest-ever global studies on work-life fulfillment. Take it now, if you haven’t yet, it’s totally free and may reveal something powerful to you.

Somehow, this “long, strange trip” has led to features in The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, FastCompany, Shondaland, Success, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, SELF, Vogue, Yoga Journal, Allure, The Guardian, Inc., ELLE, Outside, yada yada yada. Why they cared, not entirely sure, but it’s been fun.

More than anything, I’m a dad, husband, friend, and Maker who just wants to spend my time loving who I love, helping others, and making things that move people.

I look forward to sharing, learning, and deepening the connection here at Awake @ the Wheel.

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