Where the Road Ends

Why I’m Pressing Pause on Downshift

Several months ago, during our completion day for the Spring '25 cohort of Downshift, my partner Tracy led the group in a future-self visualization. I turned off the camera, laid down on my couch, and dropped in.

I've participated in (and led) this exercise countless times over the past decade, but what I saw this time was genuinely unexpected and profound.

When I met my future self in 2029…it looked similar to my life now. The outer contours of his world were all familiar.

Externally, things were more or less the same. I lived in the same house and community. I was still in the same marriage. I still coached and guided professionals navigating transition. My girls were thriving, but older. There was no huge company or team. No New York Times bestseller. No newfound influence or wealth.

But inside, something had changed. My life was not different, but I was different.

My presence felt deeper. My nervous system was more regulated. My love was overflowing. I was rooted and at peace.

I was in the company of a man who had chosen to live a simple and spacious life of service. I felt calm and grounded just being in his presence.

And that's what shocked me.

For many years, I've used these visualizations to project a future I hadn't yet manifested. Someplace bigger and bolder. More successful. More influential. More complete.

But this time, I realized: the life I was envisioning is pretty much the one I’m already living.

The life. The work. The relationships. The community. The way of being. It's essentially all here. Right now.

That vision stayed with me and continued to work me in both obvious and subtle ways. It touched something deep that had already been stirring since earlier this year when I wrote Slow Enough to Matter. And it helped me see more clearly what I hadn't yet fully admitted to myself: it’s time to clear space, simplify my life, and focus on the essential. It’s time to downshift.

That’s why, after eighteen months of hard work building the program, I’ve made the difficult decision to step away from Downshift indefinitely.

---

Downshift has been a labor of love, but it also consumed me. Beyond a full 1:1 coaching practice, I was parenting two young kids, caring for my body and mind, writing an occasional essay, and studying Hakomi, a powerful mindfulness somatic psychotherapy. The program demanded everything else.

Zoom meetings ate into my deep work blocks. Operations, email marketing, and social media—work that left me drained—consumed hours I wished I could spend creating. I found myself working after bedtime stories, skipping workouts, rushing through meditations. There was virtually no time left over for me.

When things got busy and hectic, I wasn’t the best version of myself. I was overscheduled. Flustered. Often scattered and distracted. Sometimes even lashing out at my team. There was even a Thursday evening in March when I snapped at a teammate who had inadvertently taken down our application right before the deadline. Irate, I hung up and sat at my dining room table, realizing I barely recognized myself.

The more I checked in with my body, the more I noticed there's nothing in the system that wants to keep pushing Downshift forward. The drive is gone. There’s no desire to run another cohort, to scale to hundreds and thousands of participants, to write email marketing campaigns, to hang out on social media promoting the next program, to stack my life and schedule even more.

From this experiment, I learned that when I overload my system, I’m not only tired, but I can't relax. My nervous system stays activated. My ADHD kicks into high gear, and I morph into the worst version of myself.

I realize that I need spaciousness and simplicity to feel good in my body and to hold space for others, including my family. I need fewer commitments, and I want to do less, but do it better.

---

Part of what drove me to build Downshift was an unexamined success script: that the natural next step in my evolution as a coach was to start a company. To become a master of the craft, I had to lead others and design my own program. That building something big was the only path to feeling whole and complete, especially as I entered my professional prime.

Downshift came from my soul and also from my shadow. I poured my heart into it, but beneath the surface was a subtle fear that unless I built something meaningful, I wouldn’t truly matter. That I wouldn’t be enough.

Through deep work with my mentor, I've come to see that I'm not meant to be a startup founder, at least not right now in this season of life. I don't thrive in back-to-back meetings or operational complexity. And he helped me see that impact doesn’t always come from action. Sometimes it comes through stillness and leading by example.

Instead, I want to deepen as a guide, a healer, a craftsman. That path requires something different than building: stillness, spaciousness, time, and presence.

This season of life is precious and demanding. My kids are still young, and I want to be with them as much as I can. I want to show up fully for my coaching clients, to write without haste, to lead intimate workshops or deep retreats. I want to make art with my hands, not to perform or profit, but because I feel called to make things.

For the first time in my life, I can say this without flinching: I have enough. I am enough.

I don't need to build or scale a company to feel whole or worthy of respect and love. I don't need to write a New York Times bestseller, though I still hope to write a book someday. I don’t need millions of dollars in the bank to feel safe and secure.

More and more, I'm accepting that I'm not an operator, an optimizer, or a scaler—I'm a space holder and creator. I love building the first and second version of something and offering it as a gift. Then I want to follow the next spark, the next curiosity, without needing to extract from it. As my therapist recently said, "This is just the beautiful critter you are. Let's honor it."

I feel most satisfied when I'm not striving or hustling at all. When I'm simply following what calls me, what feels easeful, what wants to be expressed through me. When I spend mornings hiking in nature, holding space for clients, meeting close friends for coffee, following creative impulse rather than a set playbook. I feel lucky that I get to choose this way.

---

So this summer, I'm taking a sabbatical—a real pause—for the first time in nearly a decade. I'm traveling with my family, resting, moving my body. I'm reconnecting to what brings me joy and deeper presence: time in nature, making art, reading fiction, slow and empty mornings.

Before I step into this sabbatical fully, I want to thank the people who made Downshift possible: David Spinks, my co-pilot, who touched every aspect of the program from the very beginning; Tracy Lawrence, my sparring partner, who infused it with radiant feminine energy and somatics; Andy Johns, my yoda, who is a wellspring of wisdom and product insight; Matt Yao, my apprentice, who stayed on top of every detail and always asked the right questions; and Alice Wells, who brought elder energy and deep wisdom into our retreat container.

And to the 30+ Downshifters who took a chance on an unproven program and had the courage to decelerate in a culture that prizes acceleration. You shaped the soul of this work more than you know, and were a constant source of motivation and inspiration.

I'm also deeply grateful to my wise friend Jerry Colonna for inviting me to imagine the life I want, not the one I think I should pursue. To my Hakomi therapist Melissa Grace for helping me feel, really feel, my truth. And to my editor Rachel Jepsen for always helping me make sense of change through writing and creative expression.

But most of all, my wife, Eliza Blank, who supported me through the inception, the building, and now the letting go. Entrepreneurship and transitions, especially with kids, require deep partnership and sacrifice.

---

Now, as I step away, I'm also in the process of completion, with my team and personally. We're honoring the journey we've been on. We're celebrating what we built. We're letting ourselves grieve. We’re appreciating our learning and growth. We’re expressing our love and gratitude for each other. Despite all the clarity I feel, this was still a surprise to everyone.

On a personal level, there are specific dreams I'm laying down. The vision of leading a platform with dozens of coaches. The fantasy of being featured on big podcasts as an influential founder and coach. The imagined future where Downshift becomes a category creator in the emerging transition space. I can feel parts of me that still long for that scale, for that recognition, for something larger. I'm learning to be in relationship with those parts, too.

Downshift is complete for now, and maybe for good. We’ve decided not to continue the program this fall. We’re honoring the journey, closing the chapter, and placing it gently on the shelf. Not in the trash, but not in our hands anymore either.

I feel proud. Of what we built. Of the impact we've had on dozens of wonderful humans. And of the decision to end it with integrity. I'm not leaving because Downshift failed or wasn't working. I'm leaving because it feels complete.

Downshift began as an answer to a question that hit like lightning one morning: In a world filled with accelerators, why aren't there decelerator programs? Why aren't there spaces for ambitious professionals to slow down during moments of transition?

I thought I was creating a program to help others transition. And I did. But I can see now I was also creating a soft landing for a part of myself that had been sprinting for too long.

It's time to slow down.