We all face challenges. Some seem positive, like pursuing aspirational goals. Some seem negative, like needing to adapt to disruptive changes. Most of my career has involved helping leaders and teams with "positive" and "negative" challenges inherent in growing innovative companies and services. I welcome the chance to support you in this way.

Some challenges knock you down so hard that you nearly cease to exist.

On July 23, 2021, I faced such an existential challenge. A beautiful summer evening celebrating my father's birthday turned into shock and horror when we were engulfed in a house explosion caused by an undetected gas leak.

Over 80% of my body was burned, 75% of it third degree (it no longer has pores, hair, or sweat glands). After weeks in a medically induced coma, 49 skin grafts, and two more months of round-the-clock care in a Burn ICU and rehab facility, I took my first steps out of the hospital. Thus began a long journey of healing, rehabilitation, and discovering my new normal.

Everything I've learned about consciously attending to my thoughts, perceptions, emotions, interpretations, decisions, and actions was put to the extreme test. Odds of survival were poor. Yet, my early recovery was so swift (long before I knew it) that it repeatedly surprised the medical team and broke records in the Burn ICU. But why?

I believe it was a combination of excellent medical care, lots of loving support from family and friends, heaps of good luck, and heartfelt love of life and playfulness that appeared as if by magic to bouy me up. This last observation stays with me as an important clue to profound truths -- truths that can always help us, even in ordinary, everyday challenges.

From the first moments of regaining consciousness, I felt a pure delight in encountering people. I was filled with a desire to be playful and generous. One of my first full communications was transcribed letter by letter by nodding as my fiance pointed at the alphabet on a whiteboard: "Can I buy an ice cream for everyone? When?" (I worked at a 50's-themed frozen custard stand in high school and knew it was nearby. Apparently, sharing ice cream is my epitome of joy...and it seems that Science now agrees!)

I experienced this emergent state as an essential quality of being alive. It took no effort. It just was. With defense mechanisms turned off and my attention only capable of being in the present, a star radiated inside me, easily and automatically.

This Joie de vivre allowed me to defy the survival odds -- and do it in style. I was astonished at how good food and drink tasted, how beautiful the views were of sailboats on Lake Michigan. I insisted on listening to music and dancing as soon as I could stand. I sought humor in every encouter on a mischievous mission to make the medical team laugh. I always strove to go above and beyond planned rehab activities. It simply felt great to be alive, revel in it, and encourage that experience in others.

When the innumerable challenges of my situation became clearer to me, sometimes in sudden realizations and more often in slow and prolongued reveals, I focused on familiar self-leadership practices that I could control. That is probably all that we ever truly control: our own thoughts, emotions, and responses. Through this experience I've become stronger, more understanding, more capable, more loving and grateful, more motivated than ever to support leaders and teams in their creative process.

Isn't that miraculous? I sincerely do not mean that as a boast. It feels incredibly important to share with fellow leaders, creators, and discoverers. Crisis-opportuity and decades of experience have given me meaningful, useful insights that I offer to you and your teams.

My conviction has only deepened: we can rise through any challenge.

Returning to the Burn ICU to share a wonderful surprise with the medical team.