Forty Years to Figure This Out. You Don't Have to Wait That Long.

If you read my last article, you know that the system underneath your leadership is what actually carries the weight. But knowing that and building it are two very different things. What I’m about to share is the part nobody talks about: what it actually looks like to build that foundation, not as a structured plan, but as a real life, lived domain by domain, over decades, mostly by accident.

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to start, or whether you have to overhaul everything at once, this one is for you. And no, it doesn’t have to take you as long as it took me. That’s exactly why - now - I’m doing this work.

Here’s what I didn’t tell you: I didn’t land here on purpose. It took me most of my life to even notice I’d done it at all.

It started at twelve, with a hard relationship with my body that I didn’t have language for yet. What came out of that pain, eventually, was curiosity. Not the kind that fixes things quickly. The kind that tests and trials and falls and learns and grows. The kind that asks real questions and doesn’t let go. In my late teens and twenties, that curiosity turned into post-graduate work in biomechanics and physiology, a fitness trainer certification, a genuine fascination with how the human body actually works, not how anyone told me it was supposed to work.

Then tech happened. Twenty-six years across Autodesk, Brocade, Cisco, Riverbed, (and a couple of start-ups in between), racing to prove myself, building things, leading teams. If you read my last article, you know where this is going: I spent those years deep inside IT networking, learning how complex systems function, where they degrade quietly before anyone notices, and what it takes to keep invisible infrastructure holding up everything visible above it. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was studying the same system I was living in. The human body, it turns out, runs on identical principles.

I was studying Internal Ecology™ in silicon before I ever named it in a human being.

Meanwhile, there was a pattern I noticed that I couldn’t seem to ignore for years, even though I tried. I had been traveling on my own to Italy and Spain, either to live for a period of time in smaller towns, or visit, since I was fifteen. And every time I traveled to these countries, I’d eat it all. Pizza, pasta, bread, gelato. And I’d lose weight. My energy was high. My skin was bright. At home, when I ate the American version of those same foods, I’d feel heavy, lethargic. I’d gain weight. My skin would be dull. Same experiment, same result, over and over, (not unlike typical advertising, when you must see something nine times before noticing), until I finally let it tell me what it was trying to say.

That became the first epiphany. I came home from one of those trips, looked at the food landscape around me with new eyes, and made an immediate decision I never reversed. It wasn’t a diet. It was a system change. I became very intentional about my real food choices here at home. And it was the first time I saw, undeniably, that the foundation and the outcomes were inseparable. FUEL was the first domain I ever built, completely by accident, just by paying attention to evidence that kept showing up no matter how many times I tried to argue with it.

The others came in their own time, when life asked for them, not before.

MOVE came soon after FUEL, through training AND the way I understood that what my body needed, shifted over time. For years, if it wasn’t high intensity movement, it wasn’t good enough. That was the rule, mostly unspoken. Then in my early forties, a friend invited me to try yoga for the first time, and something in me started to notice differently. I began to feel when my body wanted something else: Pilates, a walk, stretching, no intensity at all. I started trying new things just to see how they felt, trading pavement for a bike, a run for a hike. Recovery I already understood, if you want strength, agility, longevity, recovery isn’t optional, it’s what makes growth and vitality possible in the first place. But this was something different. This was learning to actually listen to what kind of movement my body needed that day, instead of deciding in advance what would count.

The intrinsic value of CALM & RESET came through that same yoga experience. Not for the physical practice. For what it did to my mind. For the first time, even inside a fast-paced, perfection-driven world, I found a rhythm. And then I lost it, when my dad passed away and grief did what grief does to a foundation that isn’t yet fully built. I kept working out. I kept eating well. Less out of intention and choice (a ‘get to’), but more out of going through the motions (a ‘have to’). I kept delivering at work. But the rhythm was gone. I noticed it often. But I didn’t fully name it. Not yet. I kept overriding it because I was moving so fast through life.

Then came the pause I didn’t know I needed. COVID, and then a significant cancer diagnosis, at the height of my tech career. A diagnosis that forced what my pace never had: stillness. Reflection. A reckoning with every signal my body had been sending that I’d overridden in the name of performance.

What I did with that pause wasn’t just about resting. I rebuilt, actively and deliberately, domain by domain. I chose a meditation practice, not as a retreat luxury but as a survival tool for creating calm in the middle of treatment. Consistent acupuncture for recovery, and ice-capping for prevention of side effects. Cornell’s DEI program, and then the Executive Leadership program, to keep my brain active while I was still in treatment. I was healing, regulating, and growing, all at the same time.

Then, as I was nearing the end of chemotherapy, I had another epiphany. Why was I less stressed saving my life than I had been in the last few years of my ‘successful’ career?

The answer, when it finally came, was simple: for the first time in years, I was actually listening to my body, my mind, and what was truly important to me, instead of overriding it. I had stopped pushing the application and started tending to the infrastructure. And it was saving my life.

It was in that same period, with Graves’ disease (a hyperthyroid condition that accelerates the heart rate and metabolism) and surgical menopause arriving alongside the cancer treatment, that the importance of SLEEP finally got my attention. I thought I already understood recovery from my training years. I didn’t understand sleep until it was taken from me. Anxious nights. Hot, restless, sleepless ones. And the cost wasn’t just feeling tired. It touched my thinking, my creativity, my agility, my ability to connect and be present with the people in front of me.

So, I built a new habit, deliberately and with consistency, as I had done before with many other habits I had developed with intention - one day at a time. Screens off by 9:30pm. Dim, red lighting in the evening. An hour of real reading before lights out. No disturbances. It’s been a strong boundary for over three years now. I know now that sleep isn’t separate from everything else. It’s what lets the mind and the cells in the body actually reset for whatever comes next. It quietly strengthens capacity everywhere else, all at once.

CONNECT and GROW didn’t just join the rebuilding, they completed it. Stepping out of a multi-decade tech career, navigating COVID, a cancer diagnosis, and everything that came after, I found myself reflecting honestly on the last five years for the first time. What relationships had I let thin out in the name of pace? What had I stopped learning because I was too busy executing? That reflection opened something. New networks, new experiences, new ways of thinking about what it means to lead and what it means to live.

And what became crystal clear was this: Connection and Growth are not nice-to-haves. They are not the reward you get after you’ve handled everything else. They are load-bearing walls in the system. Without intentional, curious connection, and without a genuine commitment to learning and expansion, the whole infrastructure underperforms, whether you are leading a team, a company, a country, or simply a human being who wants to thrive. For me, naming that wasn’t just a professional insight. It was a life one.

I didn’t build six domains. I built one, because the evidence kept showing up until I couldn’t argue with it anymore. Then another, when life asked for it. That’s the whole method. I just lived it for more than forty of my years before I ever had a name for it.

And here’s what I want you to take from this, more than anything else: none of this means my capacity is at its peak every day of my life. It isn’t. Some days still ask more of me than I have. What’s different now is that I’ve built a noticing muscle, one I didn’t have at twelve, or even in my thirties or most of my forties. I notice sooner. And because I notice, I have access to the choice, the shift, the higher-capacity option, whenever I need it to thrive, not just get through the day.

That’s not a finish line. That’s a muscle. And like any muscle, it’s there because I built it: one domain, one small step, and no shortcuts, one true thing at a time.

Curious about where your own Internal Ecology™ stands? The Diagnostic is a good first step.