Four months ago, I went to Maui to work on a farm.
I told myself it was to see what this intuitive pull was asking of me.
The truth? I was still running.
Most of my life, I'd been chasing an experience I couldn't name. My heart knew there was something else, but I couldn't find it in the world around me.
I could see paths already laid out by the world and others.
But they weren't mine.
There was something deeper I couldn't let go of. That transcended all paths.
That chase took me to different corners of the world. All searching for this experience I thought was out there somewhere.
Four years ago I began daily journaling and meditating, I continued to ask questions and spent many late nights exploring my curiosity.
I was chasing my own tail. I was missing the core piece.
Then I arrived in Maui.
I wanted the bliss of the water. The serenity of the land.
What I got was a beating from the sun. A roughing from the plants. And a mirror showing me what I'd been chasing my whole life.
I was running from my truth, not toward it.
I walked into my life coach's office and sat down.
"What do you want to create in your life, Ben? What do you want?"
"I don't know."
I'd been dodging that question my whole life. It brought up anxiety. Stress. A wall of noise.
Because when we try to answer "what do you want?" we're not actually answering from ourselves.
We're answering through a filter.
The chatter comes online. The fear of failure. Joe Schmo’s opinions. Our parents' expectations.
Our actual answer gets buried.
Buried under what we've been told about who we are and what we're supposed to do.
Buried under the grind of trying to find our place under the sun.
The answer to that question is literally under a pile of hundreds of heavy blankets. The more blankets you have, the less you are going to be heard. But one by one those blankets can be shed and that voice all of a sudden comes into frequency.
Those voices, those fears, those anxieties, are the blankets.
"What do you want in your life?" A seemingly simple question becomes the most complicated, stressful, anxiety-inducing question ever.
But it doesn't have to be that way. What if it could be the most exciting, challenging, soul-expanding inquiry into who we are?
"What's your relationship with desire?" he asked.
I thought it was bad. Something that would lead me astray from God and the universe. Desire has gotten a bad rap.
But what if the desire planted in you was actually from God? Where do you think you got it in the first place?
Three days later I allowed my first desire, my answer to "what do you want in your life, Ben?" to come through.
I gave it space and breathed through it. All the voices and fears of what would happen popped up trying to crush it, bury it.
But I held it. I held it in my hand and looked at it.
I want to go play soccer at the University of Notre Dame next year and I'm going to go to Argentina and train for five months.
I spoke it into the world!
This channel to my heart just got its first breath in a very long time. It came with a mountain of internal resistance but it came!
As I spoke it into the world, mountains began to move. Not mountains outside, but mountains inside of me that hadn't moved for years.
Tectonic plates were rubbing up against each other and a rebirth was being created.
I went to Argentina and the most incredible thing happened…
It kicked my butt!
But…I was trying on this new thing called 'my heart's desire.' I was learning!
I was no longer on the sidelines trying to intellectualize what I want to do with my life. I was on the front lines figuring it out.
We think that you should just know your desire or you would expect that first desire that is allowed into your life to be the thing. With that expectation we cripple ourselves because if it isn't the 'thing' we are supposed to do with our life, we return and say "I told ya so. Desire is bad."
But how do you learn anything?! You try it out and you learn from it.
Soccer didn't end up being the thing, but I had just sorted through another voice, another path different than my heart's.
I didn't suddenly know what I wanted to do with my life, but I was now allowing this channel of desire to flow and to actually try it out.
Now I see my desire everywhere and I am allowing it to speak!
That channel is the start of it.
The next step is making that desire manifest in the world. Taking steps toward it.
When I had this desire for soccer come into my life, I had a choice. I could leave it forever in the ether or I could act on it. So I booked my flight.
Book the flight.
As my channel to desire has opened, I now have the opportunity to take more steps. That brings up its own set of fears, but they are absolutely beautiful and part of this whole process.
There will always be plenty of healing to do in my life, but now it is time to grow. To expand.
My renaissance era.
The things I most want finally have space to speak. To guide me.
I am direct now. I can speak what I want and go after it.
I used to fear that my desires would inconvenience people. Annoy them. Blow things up. Change their lives.
And yes, they will.
But I'm okay with that.
Because when I'm doing the things most true to me, I'm most loving and present. And when I'm most loving and present, I show up for others and the world in the most exponentially impactful way.
Renaissance Coaching
I'm a modern renaissance coach for high-achieving men going through their own rebirth.
Men who've created incredible lives—wealth, health, relationships, career—but have been so locked in, they haven't stopped to ask what's actually true.
I work one-on-one with a small number of men through a six-month renaissance:
We discover your channel to yourself. We cut through the noise of infinite options to find the one path that's most true. Your values. Your heart's greatest desire—not ego's desire, soul's desire.
We speak it into the world.
Then we go create it.
You're a being in this world, but not your most powerful one.
This is for you if:
You're a high-achiever who's built real success—the career, the income, the wins. You're proud of what you've built.
But you know there's something more.
You have so many options, but the options themselves have become the problem. You're overwhelmed by possibility when what you're actually seeking is clarity on the one path that's most true for you.
Maybe it's a relationship that doesn't match who you're becoming. Maybe it's a lack of clarity on what's next. Maybe you've realized that external achievement hasn't fully met your needs.
You're results-oriented. You don't sit around talking about problems, you solve them. But you've stumbled upon something where you know you can't do it alone.
You're ready to go deeper. To discover the channel to yourself. To speak your truth. To create the life that's been calling you.
If that's you, reply to this email with "renaissance" and let's talk.
Full steam ahead.
With love,
Double B
My 10 free ‘Create Your Life’ Calls are complete.
In those conversations, I sat with incredible humans— CEOs, entrepreneurs, pro athletes, nurses, soon-to-be fathers. Men and women who've built beautiful external lives and knew something deeper was calling.
Thank you to everyone who showed up. I don't see myself offering those calls again in that way, so to those who took the chance, what a special opportunity we shared.
My YouTube → Documenting my renaissance in real-time | Watch here
Renaissance Call → Ready to talk? | Reply ‘Renaissance’