Become That Kind of Person

Have you experienced a personal, evolutionary shift that took your breath away?

If so, and it happened sometime in the past two years, I’d call you an Inspired Badass.

Truly.

These past two years have been challenging. I’ve been writing Guideposts since November 2024 to encourage you through this weird and wacky season. I hope they’ve felt supportive.

And if you have a story about your own evolution during this time, please share it. I want to hear from you.

Here’s My Story

Recently, an undeniable trail of breadcrumbs revealed a personal advancement for me. The experience gave me an opportunity to see myself in a stronger, more vibrant way.

It made me wonder:

When these moments happen in your life, do you allow yourself to believe what you’re witnessing?

I allowed myself to believe. Here’s what happened.

Recently, I spent seven weeks in Denver, away from our home in Salt Lake City. It was an intentional season outside our normal home and family routines.

During that time, Annie and I maintained our regular client load. We attended art shows and watched Annie’s work develop as she submitted pieces through the “call for entry” process. I invested energy into implementing updated systems at SoulSalt.

And together, Annie and I opened a new branch of our work called Soul Sovereignty.

There was another significant focus, one that benefited greatly from being in Denver. Some of you know my primary fencing club and coach are in the Denver area. We’d been preparing and training for this year’s USA Fencing Summer Nationals.

Last July, after my best season yet, my coach and I designated 2025–2026 as a “Building Year”, not a “Go Win a Medal Year”. Fencing takes 10+ years to master. This was only my fifth competitive season. There was plenty of room to grow in skill, strategy, mindset, and tactics.

So I dug in.

I learned. Refined. Practiced. And worked to become a more advanced athlete.

As June arrived, everything was on track. Jenn Link had my body ready. The crew at Denver Fencing Center had refined my skills. My mindset and decision-making had greatly improved.

Our goal was simple:

Trust the process and let the work prove itself in competition.

Then, two weeks before Nationals, everything changed.

During a practice bout, I sustained what initially felt like an intense set of bruises. I didn’t give them much thought until, a few bouts later, a solid hit to my chest plate left me groaning out loud and gasping for air.

A doctor confirmed that I was now the proud owner of a cracked rib and a hairline fracture in my back foot. Six weeks is the absolute minimum for ribs to heal. As a lower extremity, the foot can take even longer.

I had two weeks.

If you’ve ever broken a rib, you know the kind of discomfort I’m talking about. It hurts to breathe, move, sleep, sit, bend over. And should a sneeze, laugh, or cough occur? The pain reaches an almost unbearable crescendo.

I was facing a sobering reality about my physical limitations, one that left me teetering mentally and physically on the edge of catastrophe.

However, I stayed calm.

Trusting the process that had gotten me this far gave me the resilience to stay afloat rather than fall into despair. I let reality settle in for a few days. I considered the possibility that my season was over.

Then I asked a different question:

Given this reality, what is still possible?

Become a Student of Possibility

Having a long-standing possibility practice, I became extra curious and began exploring my options. For example, I kept moving by fencing left-handed. This workaround moved the wounded parts away from harm’s way. For a moment, we even wondered whether I could compete left-handed.

Two days of left-handed fencing answered that question.

Nope.

My morning training sessions were carefully adjusted to lower-body actions only, which actually fit well with the tapering pattern common before competitions.

Annie brought in her healing gifts, including Chinese medicine and hooking me up to a TENS machine. We found ways to reinforce and protect my body with padding, sheep’s wool, and tape.

I purchased a more sophisticated FIE-approved jacket and mask.

Each day, I kept an open mind. Rather than deciding what was impossible, I stayed curious about what might still be possible.

Two days before I needed to leave for Nationals, Coach Nathan and I carefully tested a return to right-handed fencing. Wrapped like the Michelin Man and protected as much as possible, I discovered that with minimal pain and maximum focus, I could adequately fence.

The goal changed.

It was no longer about proving anything. It was about performing as well as I could within the constraints I had, while protecting my body and not disrupting the healing process.

The decision was made. Annie and I packed our bags and gear and flew to Portland.

That’s where something unexpected happened.

Engaging Flow

I had the best National performance of my career.

I swept my pools, 6–0. Advanced through direct eliminations. Defeated one of the current World Championship medalists. Finished with a bronze medal and a shiny new “B” rating.

And at the end of it all, I was ranked eighth in the country in my division. It took a team to pull this off.

My coaching staff stayed by my side. Two former clients came to support me. And, of course, Annie was constant and solid on the sideline. Each evening, she spent nearly two hours helping my body recover through Chinese medicine and bodywork. She put me back together and minimized the pain.

As grateful as I am for the results, which represent my best performance yet at the National Championships, the real prize was experiencing what had shifted inside of me.

Something had finally changed that my coaches had been trying to teach me for months:

Stop fencing with rigidity.

Flow ruled the day. In a strange way, the injuries forced me to become more efficient. More relaxed. More strategic.

I couldn’t overpower situations. I had to read my opponent more carefully. Think more clearly. Move only when it mattered. Waste nothing.

Ironically, pain became my teacher.

It showed me that tension was costing me more than I realized.

The Lesson Beyond Fencing

I think many of us live this way. We grip harder than needed. We work harder than necessary. We force when wisdom would advise otherwise. We mistake tension for commitment. We assume that if we just try harder, success will follow.

But excellence often requires something different:

Less force. More skill. More focus. More flow.

What Personal Growth Really Looks Like

The greatest gift from this experience wasn’t standing on the podium, although that was joyful and deeply satisfying. It was standing in front of myself with a new perspective.

From this perspective, I can see:

• Evidence that I can continue growing in my sixties and beyond.
• Evidence that old patterns can change.
• Evidence that mastery isn’t reserved for the young. It belongs to anyone willing to become a student again.
• Evidence that consistency leads to mastery, that mastery is earned through thousands of small refinements rather than one extraordinary performance.

And perhaps most importantly, I am left believing something I had previously only hoped:

I am becoming the kind of athlete who belongs on the national podium.

I can see now that my game has fundamentally changed. But even more importantly, my identity has changed.

And identity lasts much longer than trophies.

Is This the Real Work of Life?

I wonder if this is the real work.

We stop asking: “How do I achieve more?”

And start asking: “Who am I becoming through this process?”

We focus on becoming the kind of person capable of extraordinary things, because we all have the capacity to do so. We find people who can help us create a process, and then we trust that process by consistently following through.

When life interrupts our plans, we adjust. We explore whether we can become more fluid instead of more rigid. And eventually, if we keep doing the work, we accumulate enough evidence that our old identity simply doesn’t fit anymore.

We have become that kind of person.

My Hope for You

My hope is that you’ll put in the work. And when that work pays off, I hope you’ll look beyond the medal, the promotion, the accomplishment, or whatever outward evidence arrives.

Look at the person who earned it. Notice who you had to become along the way.

Believe the evidence.

Allow yourself to claim the stronger, wiser, more capable identity you worked so hard to build. Because that’s the real victory.

Go be victorious, my friend. Start today.