Conscious Connection
My Story, Part 3: The Journey Back
The lazy rumble of the miles-long cargo train rolling through behind me was the only thing to drown out what had been an endless hum of coal barges pushed by ancient tugboats as they lumbered night and day down the river.
Sitting there by my bus-house in the sweltering evening sunlight, surrounded by the faint smell of diesel exhaust and distant rusty industry, I was about half an hour into our regular check-in conversation with Tina when, with her patented gritty candor, she dropped the bomb:
“My friend… I think it’s time… to stop isolating.”
That evening, on the banks of the Mississippi, I started my journey back to life.
Oh Brothers, Let’s Go Down…
Ten years after the framework exploded, I was done. I’d done the grad school thing. The lose your virginity thing. The ‘oh crap, I need therapy’ thing.
Blackout nights, shady girlfriends doing drugs (the hard ones…) on my living room floor, getting more into debt than I ever had been even while making more money than both my parents, combined.
Don’t get me wrong, just like the bus, it all depends on the lens of the story. Those ten years were also filled with wisdom, prestige, awards, amazing travels, and lots of hilarious nights spent around campfires in the mountains.
But if you really, really, really knew me? I had slowly become aware of my structureless agency. And it was exhausting.
It started as a whisper, but over the years had grown to be one of the loudest thoughts knocking at the back of my skull:
What’s the point?
If there’s no more cosmic architecture to explain the big questions of life, and it falls on me to just… decide why I’m here - then what the hell is the point of all of this?
The unconscious choice of “I’m in charge” left me standing in a vacuum, and my response to that void was to become a mental drifter.
See, I’m an Enneagram 9: the peacemaker type. And one of the evil superpowers of the peacemaker in my soul is an uncanny ability to appear present and engaged, but internally to disappear, to be either shut down or semi-disassociated. You could have a full conversation with me, and feel seen, heard, understood… but I’d be in another world.
And I had drifted into this whirlpool of a headspace without knowing it.
I was in full control of the sails, but rudderless. Drifting along with the currents that I thought mattered, or the ones easiest to slip into. It may have looked exciting from the outside, but slowly over a few years I had abandoned most of my friends, quit my job, lived semi-homeless in a parking lot, and given up on… well… really… being conscious.
But hey… at least I built this prison all by my mighty self, right?
Remember that point about the self being a small room? I’d locked myself in it.
The Limits of Unconscious “By Me”
In what felt like a herculean effort, I started to do inventory: In the last few years, what were the moments where I felt most alive? What were the common themes? Where did I find moments unburdened by that shadow of my upbringing that I’d spent years running from?
Turns out, the answers outlined a grand theme. They were all connected to… connection. The joy of being a team of four raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and building one of the fastest growing startups in Colorado. The quiet affection of buying therapeutic oxygen for one of my close friends when he couldn’t afford it after an unexpected quadruple bypass… at 40yrs old. The gentle unwrapping of the ‘me’ beneath all those personas and protections.
And at the top of the list: anything and everything to do with a reframe of “by me” that I’d found in a structure called Conscious Leadership. A way of thinking where yes - the choice was mine, good and bad outcomes were all my responsibility, but it went beyond just the outcome ranking. The biggest, first, and ongoing challenge of this work?
Do I know where I am?
Am I conscious of myself, my situation, and the choices I have? And what might be the benefits of operating from that “by me” mindset, but with an eye towards connection rather than isolation.
Connection with myself. Connection with my community. Connection with that bigger, more nebulous spirituality or god or source or whatever name you want to put on it. It’s not about a requirement to have all the answers, rather a willingness to see the questions as the important part.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”
And in that work, my slow road back to reconstruction found its first bit of pavement.
As Above, So Below.
The core foundational concept in conscious leadership is a horizontal line.
It represents our mindset at any given moment. We can exist, think, and act from above that line, or below.
Below the line? Everything is happening “to me” and there’s nothing I can do. Reactionary. Unconscious. At the affect of the world. Full of righteousness and binary answers. Judgmental. Architectural.
The world I grew up in was foundationally below the line. As a naturally born broken and sinful human, I started life on my back foot, and the entirety of salvation and eternal life was not in my hands, but at the whims of that big bearded white man in the sky.
Sure, it was my decision to pray for forgiveness and my future in heaven, but given the alternative… did 6yr old me really have a choice?
Deconstruction is also below the line. Dealing with the aftermath of what’s been given or forced upon us is fundamentally reactionary. Victim mode, pure and simple.
In contrast, above the line: Openness. Curiosity. Seeing the world as something I can impact. Choosing to take responsibility for the circumstances of my life. Recognizing myself as the source of security, control, and approval. Moving away from blame and apathy. Living in abundance and connection.
And it’s from that posture - one of true awareness-driven agency - where reconstruction is truly possible. Not the zero-sum-game of “look what’s been done to me that I now have to deal with…” but a win-for-all. A deep claim to my full responsibility over my life and spirituality. A path forward out of the rubble.
Here’s where I can reveal that I kinda tricked you: that unconscious “by me” mindset I adopted over that time in the wilderness? It’s actually still below the line. I was using my agency, but without awareness. Still in a reactionary posture. The “by me” and “through me” concepts we’ll talk more about can be found above the line.
Work Life Integration
One of the other outcomes of that inventory was a career change. I stopped being KPI Keith, working on operations, finance, people and culture, marketing analytics… and became Coach Keith.
I found success leveraging one of my Zones of Genius (more about that later), and today exist professionally as an Executive Coach and Master Facilitator - helping leaders and teams find higher efficiency and effectiveness through the regular practice of conscious leadership and other development modalities.
It was these concepts, this new framework, that transformed my professional world and leadership ability, and I’ve had the absolute pleasure of extending these insights to thousands of executives across the globe. Showing others the value of taking agency and responsibility for who they are and how they show up at work. Moving from victim and villain to creator and challenger.
And slowly, over time, it filtered into my personal life, too. And then… at an even more glacial speed, I started to see the friction and the fortune of analyzing my deconstructed, imploded faith through these new eyes. The process of conscious reconstruction.
I’m not a broken, born sinful, inherently evil little monster of a soul. My value does not come from an extrinsic source like the blood of a man born two thousand years ago and my ability to play by his rules.
What I am, in contrast to all of those stories, and belief structures, and lessons bricked in by my father and his friends, is a wholly-formed, intrinsically valuable thing of humanity.
Imperfect? Yes. But this kintsugi-cracked vessel is to be celebrated, not shunned. Gilded with gold, not ground down to dust.
I am good. I am whole. I am aware. I am… me.
And that, my friend, is the point.
Into the Future
This conscious reconstruction thing is not black and white. It’s not a switch we all get to flip and all the lights turn on. I was rationally and academically well-versed in conscious leadership for years before that moment on the riverbank… and had applied it to a wide variety of areas of my life. But in a way, I hadn’t done the hardest part. I hadn’t looked at one of the core scars I wear every day.
I was a good teacher. And a pretty bad integrator. I’m still learning. Still understanding where I have some deeply held unconscious commitments. There are stories from the last 18 months of my life (years past that pivotal riverside moment) that might have you second guessing my credibility on this whole topic.
All I can promise is that I’ll share with the hopes that something in here is of benefit.
Why I took so much intentional time to share all of this context can be summed up by a set of sticky notes pinned above my desk, always a quick glance away:
The more ‘me’ I have been over the years, the more I’ve shared my story, and the more honest I’ve been with myself and others… the ever more aliveness I’ve experienced.
So, what can you expect from me? From this space? From those who also want to share here?
We’ll talk tactical frameworks - ones absent a mythical master who controls the outcome even from within the cloak of free will.
We’ll share stories - the good days, the bad days, and everything in the messy gray. But stories by themselves are just entertainment - we’ll share the value, insight, and application.
We’ll consciously reconstruct together - some still in the faith, others about as far away as possible. All welcome, as long as there’s a desire for curiosity and connection.
Come along, my friends. ‘Cause the (lowercase) god I know today? It’s found in the magical sense we all feel when we are truly, authentically, and vulnerably in connection with ourselves and each other, grappling with the questions as if that effort itself is actually the answer we’ve been after.