Why I Wrote One Life to Lead

I started writing when I lived in Costa Rica between 2018 and 2019. My family and I moved abroad for a year and I had this renewed energy and desire to make sense of the last 20 years of my professional life. I had a lot to say because one of my challenges is opening up and really expressing myself. So it was like this huge release to begin streaming the feelings that had been swirling in my gut for so long but I was unable to release them.

Originally I just sat down at a local bakery in the city of San Jose Costa Rica and just flowing without a specific outcome. I didn't write in an attempt to chronicle a journey. Rather it was almost like I was just journaling what was coming up for me in that moment. And the more I wrote, the lighter I felt. It was a little bit of an out of body experience, where I could finally separate my being from my actions and look at them without judgement. I wasn't beating myself up. I was just curious what patterns emerged as I documented my experiences.

For the first time in a long time, I felt free. I was unlocking a self-imposed cage I had erected that had created a lot of life and leadership limitations. I was trying to get unstuck. When I returned from Costa Rica, I had about 50 pages written and wanted to turn these writings into a book. I quickly decided that this was not going to be a book about me. Rather, I wanted to create a book that captured the stories of other business leaders in order to demonstrate that the challenges of getting unstuck and getting in front of designing one's life is a universal struggle. I wanted to call the book Unstuck!

After interviewing many business leaders, I narrowed down the themes of self leadership to 5 steps you can read about in the book. I then used those 5 steps as the skeleton for the book that I then infused with explanations, stories, and exercises that could make an impact day 1 for any reader. It also became my own guidebook for self management because I'm as prone as anyone to fall in and out of awareness when I'm self sabotaging.

I changed the name from Unstuck when I saw that there were about 13 books on Amazon with the title Unstuck. While getting unstuck is certainly a goal, the title felt a bit too limiting, a bit too dour. I battled with a new title for about 45 days and then I had the classic "thought about it in the shower" moment. One Life to Lead was born! I get a lot of energy from the title and I hope you do too.

I was fortunate that Al Osborne, Anderson UCLA Professor of Entrepreneurship, was open to writing the foreword for the book. I wanted to ground the book a bit in academic relevance and while One Life to Lead is by no means academic in a strict sense, its principles are grounded in core disciplines of leadership and strategy that are taught at business schools around the United States.

I hope you enjoy the book and learn from it as I am still learning from it everyday. I want it to be a reminder or reference book as you traverse through your own transitions, knowing that you are not alone and that the roadmap to architect your life design is inside of you.