Learning to lead at work made her reflect on how to lead her life. What does it mean to be a leader in life? It has to be more than what you do for an employer or what we expect from politicians, business, and spiritual leaders. These questions forced her to examine how she made choices, why she held herself back, and the obstacles that humbled and strengthened her.

Already on the journey of personal mastery, she looked at how she communicated, the importance of being silent, the gift of listening, and the impact of continuous learning. But what made her step into transforming her life is the silent mantra of discontent in how she experienced daily life.

The other shift in her mindset was when she experienced significant losses within a short period. Her two best friends died separately and unexpectedly. Her sweet pug crossed the rainbow bridge, her husband’s decades-long mystery illness finally had a name, and she became ill, healed, got sick again, and recovered. Death and illness have a way of waking you up.

Tired of living small, she decided that part of her journey to personal mastery was to push against things she resisted, feared, or used to procrastinate. Testing her resolve, she decided to go trapeze flying on her 38th birthday to kickstart her new path and vision of herself. Her adventurous spirit grew so big that she has since jumped out of planes, walked on fire, sat in the revealing heat of a sweat lodge ceremonies, found wisdom through vision quests, traipsed through Ecuador looking for frogs, published a book, and redefined what it means to live this life as a human…being human.