Ink From The Ashes

My route to coaching wasn’t the same as most. There was no childhood dream, no coaching ladder climbed with a whistle in hand. Coaching was never part of my post college five-year plan. Neither was it the stranger softly knocking on my door asking for a moment of my time. It just barged in one day and said, “You’re doing this now.”

So when I landed in the muddy trenches of the coaching world, I quickly realized my approach didn’t quite… match the wallpaper. While others were focused on upholding the tradition passed down from generations before, I kept hearing this rebellious whisper in my head:

“But we don’t have to do it that way.”

And apparently, that’s a dangerous thing to say in rooms built on legacy. That phrase tends to rattle cages, especially the ones lined with control, fear, and comfort disguised as structure.

My brain has always refused to sit still. It lives in innovation mode. It paces the room talking to itself. It questions.

It burns playbooks and writes new ones with the ink made from the ashes.

This kind of mindset doesn’t earn you a crowd. It earns you silence. Sometimes suspicion. Often solitude.

Innovation is a lonely place. Sometimes it’s a deserted island with nothing but your crazy ideas and a volleyball named Wilson for company.

I’d look at Wilson and say, “No one’s doing it like this.”

Hearing this, a mischievous smirk slowly breaks the surface, he replies, “Hell yeah. Let’s break everything.”

The more I’ve leaned into who I really am, the more I’ve realized my soul has two innate modes of operation: Innovation and Disruption.

Innovation and disruption are best friends joined at the hip. They are the essence of the phrase, “Thick as thieves”. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t live in these spaces without deep courage. A courage that welcomes the truth that many won’t understand you or what you’re trying to do.

Innovation, by its very nature, disrupts.

It greets discomfort with a bear hug.

It causes ripples of unsettlement that slap the ships in the harbor.

Thank God for the discomfort because nothing grows in comfort.

Except moss.

And maybe mediocrity.

Whether we’re stepping into the unknown of a new mental skill, or stepping into our lives more fully as ourselves, disruption is inevitable.

Disruption is the marrow of this whole damn thing.

It’s how I connect.

To myself.

To the athlete sitting across from me who’s silently begging for permission to become someone new. The someone they’ve always felt they were but never felt safe enough to be.

To the hum of the deeper current resonating in all of us. The one that doesn’t give a damn about tradition, only the courage and vulnerability of you being you.

Disruption asks for trust. A terrifying, holy, sacred kind of trust. The kind that says, “I don’t know where this goes, but I’m with you.”

When you say yes to the unknown destination of disruption, that’s the moment you step into connection. It will crack open your chest like open heart surgery. Disruption is a beauty that bruises.

Zero in on connection by being strangely curious.

Walk the jagged path of innovation.

Welcome the sacred unraveling caused by innovation’s disruption.

And to all the confused onlookers wondering what the hell you’re doing…

You’re not here to be understood by everyone.

That’s not your job.

You’re here to be unapologetically you with every breath you’ve got.