I started formally teaching when I was sixteen years old. That was over 20 years ago, and I was still in high school at the time. In this early experience, I taught summer school to middle school students who didn’t want to be there. I spent more time trying to maintain order than imparting knowledge. But, it didn’t matter. Despite the chaos, I felt that the teaching role was a good fit for me. It felt like home.

Since that initial experience, I’ve been in a teaching role ever since. I moved from teaching middle school students to teaching teachers how to use computers and software, college students how to do advanced math and program computers, graduate students how to program computers, and youth and adults how to do this thing called life.

Lessons from the Computer World

Although a lot of my teaching experience was in the computer world, it is directly related to the human world. I’m often asked how I moved from working with computers to working with people. My answer: people have become very much like computers. We are the human computer. As an aside, computers were designed to mimic human beings. The reason computers can never replace us is because they cannot program, design, and implement themselves. They are only as smart and capable as we make them. They cannot do what they have not been designed to do.

Just like computers, we run programs (our human software) on our hardware (our human hardware). A lot of times we have “buggy” software (patterns of thinking, feeling, being, or doing) or “faulty” hardware (mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional faculties) that don’t serve us well. In the computer world, the software bugs would be tracked down and fixed (debugged or reprogrammed) and the hardware faults would be fixed (replaced or repaired). Sounds simple, right? I assure you that it’s not. Sometimes, it’s easier to start all over again from scratch.

The same work is needed in the human reality. For us to be at our best, we have to debug and reprogram our human software and repair our human hardware. Computer systems provide clear models of how to do that.

Lessons from Personal Experiences

In addition to my computer science background, I leverage my personal experiences. From as early as I can remember, I’ve been dealing with challenges in my life—abandonment, abuse, failure, success, illness, health, etc. These experiences, the good ones and the not so pleasant ones, have all provided me with opportunities to explore solutions.

These solutions are the trails that I use to inform my teaching. These experiences move me to teach. In other words, my teaching comes from the inside and flows out. That’s why I consider myself to be an introspective teacher: I teach what I’ve experienced. If I haven’t experienced it, I don’t teach about it. Direct, hands-on experience is at the core of everything for me.

Teaching Objectives

I strive to provide a continuum of solutions (systems) to help people to navigate challenges and opportunities that I’ve experienced myself. I help them move beyond information to building knowledge (being able to apply newfound information toward shifting habits) and gaining wisdom (developing deep, experiential understanding). An example continuum may consist of a book (information) along with guided meditations or journals that they can use develop knowledge and wisdom.

This site is designed to support this continuum. That’s why there is a wide-range of resources on various topics. That’s why I offer a wide-range of services and other offerings.

Being Blessed to Teach

I take my role as a teacher very seriously. I feel that it’s a blessing and privilege to be able to teach. That’s why I’m constantly learning. I’ve been told that the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience I have is astounding. To me, I think it’s necessary to be the best teacher I can be. As I’ve pointed out in The Most Valuable Profession?, teaching is the most important profession, whether it’s done informally or formally.