The Call That Changes Everything #1: When Life Forces Your Hand

Mindset #1 or 3

March 2024. I'm 54 years old. Then, the chat nobody wants. The company I've been working for might not survive. Just like that, everything I'd built over years of work becomes uncertain. My income. My role. My identity as someone who had it figured out.

No college degree. No traditional credentials that would make recruiters jump. A career path that looked more like controlled chaos than strategic planning. At an age when most people are thinking about stability, I was facing the opposite.

Most people would panic. I get it. When your livelihood is threatened, when everything stable evaporates, when the path forward just disappears - panic feels natural. Maybe even appropriate.

I chose something different. I chose radical service.

The Decision Point

Here's what I've learned through that experience and through coaching hundreds of people across the globe since then: life doesn't give you a choice about what happens to you. It gives you absolute choice about how you respond.

That sounds like a platitude. It's not. It's the difference between transformation and devastation.

When I got that call, I had two paths in front of me:

Path 1: Panic. Spiral. Become a victim of circumstances. Spend my energy on fear and resentment about how unfair it all was. Let the uncertainty define me. Allow the chaos to control my next steps.

Path 2: Get my head straight. Acknowledge the reality. Feel the fear, then move past it to ask the only question that matters: "What do I do now?"

I chose Path 2. Not because I'm superhuman or fearless. Because I refused to let circumstances define my response.

What Radical Service Looks Like

Within months of that discussion, I launched a global coaching practice. I started mentoring professionals from multiple continents. Worked with startup founders and established executives. Authored books. Built something real from what could have been rubble.

Here's what radical service actually meant:

It meant getting up every morning and putting my right foot on the floor, literally and metaphorically. Nobody else could do that for me. Nobody else could decide how I was going to show up that day.

It meant choosing to serve others even when my own situation was unstable. Counterintuitive? Maybe. However, service pulls you out of your own head. It gives you purpose when everything else feels purposeless.

It meant being honest about my situation, not hiding it. Vulnerability became strength. Every person I talked to about my transition opened doors I didn't know existed.

It meant taking small steps forward every single day, even when I couldn't see the full path. One conversation. One blog post. One connection. Small steps compound.

The Hard Truth About Stuff

Being direct: we all have stuff crushing us.

Your stuff will be different than mine. Lighter, similar or heavier. Maybe you are facing a layoff. Maybe you're in a toxic work environment. Maybe you're stuck in a career that stopped fulfilling you years ago and you can't see a way out. Maybe it's family chaos, financial pressure, health problems, emotional turmoil.

Everyone's got stuff. The specifics are not as relevant as much as what you do with them.

How you choose to arrive tomorrow in the face of that stuff is completely up to you.

You can allow those circumstances to influence you, to define your day – today - to control your trajectory. You can wake up and let the weight of your problems determine how you show up. You can spend your energy on worry and fear and resentment or you can get into your own head and say: "This is terrible. I don't like being in the middle of it. I can be the master of it."

You can control the things going on about you, for you, around you. You can work to solve the challenges you face instead of allowing them to define who you are.

The Question That Matters

No matter what problem gets thrown at you, you have the opportunity to look at it and ask:

What do I do with myself now?

I am here. It is what it is. What do I do now?

How do I put one foot forward and start working toward resolving this problem? How do I make life easier for me? How do I make life better for people around me? How do I move forward?

These aren't rhetorical questions. They're the actual framework I used. They're the questions I ask every client who comes to me in crisis.

Notice what's not in those questions:

• "Why did this happen to me?"

• "How is this fair?"

• "Who can I blame?"

• "What if it gets worse?"

Those questions keep you stuck. They feed victim mentality. They drain energy without producing action.

The questions that matter focus on agency. On what you can control. On next steps.

Twenty Months Later

It's been twenty+ months since that discussion. Here's what I've learned coaching people across continents, across industries, across every kind of circumstance you can imagine:

People who succeed in transforming their circumstances choose to arrive differently.

They don't deny reality. They're not delusional optimists who pretend problems don't exist. They don't paste on fake positivity and hope things magically improve.

They look at the problem square in the face and say: "What do I do now? How do I move forward?"

They work to understand themselves, their motivations, their why. They get honest about their strengths and weaknesses. They ask for help when they need it. They serve others even when they need service themselves.

Most importantly: they don't allow their circumstances to define them.

They don't slip into victim mode. They don't spend their energy complaining about how unfair things are. They don't wait for someone else to fix their problems.

Truth: you're the only person who puts your right foot on the floor in the morning. Nobody else can do that for you. Nobody else can make the decision about how you're going to show up.

The Choice in Front of You

Right now, and every day, you have the choice.

You can absorb all the fear and chaos thrown at you by news cycles and office gossip and social media doomscrolling. You can let that noise define what tomorrow looks like for you. I promise, if you do, the next day’s noise will just get worse – small increments daily. And the day after - worse. Rinse and repeat.

Or

You can decide what you are going to do for yourself. What you are going to do to make the world just a little bit better. What you're going to do to move toward the future you actually want.

The world is changing rapidly. Technology is accelerating everything. Uncertainty is everywhere. The fear is real.

What good does fear do you? What does it do with your mental, emotional, physical energy reserves?

What Happens Next

If you're feeling uncertain or fearful right now, stop. Take a breath.

You don't need to have it all figured out. You don't need a perfect plan. You don't need credentials or connections or certainty.

You need to make one decision: How will you show up tomorrow? Will you allow yourself to arrive as a victim of circumstance? Or arrive as someone who acknowledges reality and refuses to be defined by it?

Your stuff is real. Your problems are legitimate. Your fear is understandable.

None of that determines what you do next.

What will you decide?

When I got that call at 54, I could have let it define the end of my career. Instead, I let it define the beginning of my most meaningful work.

Not because the circumstances changed. Because I chose how I would respond to them.

Your circumstances don't define you. Your response does.

Your right foot is on the floor. What do you do next?

This article reflects on lessons learned from a career transition and twenty+ months of coaching professionals globally through similar moments of disruption and choice.