I was doing all the right things.

I've spent most of my life inside high-pressure systems. As a U.S. Navy Reserve hospital corpsman in the Gulf War, I cared for Marines who had to perform when everything was on the line. As a special educator, I worked with children with emotional and behavioral challenges and their families, and I learned to look at what runs underneath behavior. Later, as a school leader on an executive team, I brought all of it to the table.

Every week, my colleagues and I sat down, with real discipline and commitment, to talk through our goals, our strategies, and every obstacle in our way. We talked about all of it, in great detail, trying to figure it out so we could solve the problem and move on. Our unofficial theme song was "Crazy Train." We were working hard, and not much ever changed.

Until a very difficult conversation with my superintendent. Yes, I was doing the right things, but I wasn't getting the right results. He challenged me: "Figure this out, or you'll have to go." I was crushed. After all that effort, even getting it right, it still wasn't enough. That afternoon, I vowed to figure it out and to become the coach I wished I'd had.

What do you do when the right things aren't producing the right results?

I already had a master's in community mental health counseling, a doctorate in leadership, and years of working inside systems. I was doing everything I knew how to do. So I went looking for what I didn't know.

I found NeurOptimal® the way most people find what actually helps them: sideways. I thought it would be good for other people. I was still looking outward, trying to solve everyone else's problems while I justified my own. Then I tried it myself, just to see. After four sessions, something shifted. I felt like I had just come back. I didn't know where I'd been, but I felt like I was in my body, maybe for the first time.

From there, I could finally see what had been happening in those weekly meetings. We weren't inviting each other into the solution. We were all just trying to control one another, and the situation, to get the outcomes we wanted, without hurting anyone if we could help it. Every solution we reached for pointed outside ourselves, and every one of them meant more effort.

That's what I offer now: the conditions to stop bracing and see what you've been missing. I don't teach it. I create the space where it can happen, because I know what it's like to find it for yourself. I work with people in person at SolFlo in Wicker Park, and every day through MoreYou.app.