Purpose, Loss, and UNBLOCKED Reinvention: Finding Clarity in Career Paths and Career Pivots
Episode Details
Transcript
In this episode of the UNBLOCK Yourself Podcast, we continue sharing the stories behind your hosts, Greg and Whitney.
Today, Greg shares his journey — from building a life that looked perfect on the outside, to navigating unimaginable loss, and ultimately stepping fully into a life of intention and purpose.
Through the highs of career success and the depths of personal tragedy, Greg found himself faced with a choice: stay in survival mode, or intentionally create a new chapter.
This conversation is about resilience, realignment, and choosing to live fully — not just when life forces your hand, but because you decide to.
In this conversation, Greg shares:
- Growing up with strong family roots and high expectations
- Building a career and family on autopilot without questioning the cost
- Navigating the loss of his wife during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Learning how to rebuild life with intention, clarity, and heart
- Why you do not have to wait for tragedy to live the life you want
Greg’s story is at the heart of why we’re doing this work today.
We are so grateful you are here.
We’d love to connect with you. Here’s where to find us:
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Every other Thursday, we talk to people who got UNBLOCKED. You'll hear stories about finding clarity, career paths, career pivots and living with intention. Our guests tell us how they realized something had to change, made bold moves, and built lives that feel more aligned, more alive, and more intentional. We’ll share some of our own stories too, because we’re right here, figuring it out like everyone else.
Greg
Don't wait for a diagnosis, a a catastrophe, a horrible thing to be the thing that pushes you from being a passenger to the driver of your life. I think what we've been through, Whitney, in shaping a life together, we've proven to ourselves and to others that you can you can be intentional about setting up a life that you want. And I think you've said it best, this idea of if we're not running toward a life that we love, what are we doing? Whitney
Hi. I'm Whitney. Greg
And I'm Greg. Welcome to the Unblock Yourself podcast. Whitney
Too many of us are stuck on autopilot. We're following a path that seems like it wasn't our choice, leaving us feeling stuck even when life looks good on the outside. Greg
In each episode, we sit down with people who escaped autopilot and are unblocked. They share the stories about what they're doing now and what they did to get Whitney
there. You'll leave feeling inspired by the stories you hear, but more importantly, you'll have real tactical steps to get unblocked in your own life. Welcome back, everybody. Greg
Hello. Whitney
This is our second episode. Thank you for joining us. Alright. So today, we are turning the tables. In our first episode, you learned, a bit about me, a bit about Unblock Yourself and Vienna Waits and kinda why we're doing what we're doing with this podcast. And today, Greg is going to be in the hot seat, and I'm gonna be interviewing you. Are you ready for it? Greg
Oh, boy. I don't know. I don't know if I'm ready for it. Whitney
Alright. I think the first thing I'll say when I think about Greg and his story, you heard my story yesterday, and we probably have the most polar opposite childhoods, that two people could have. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but they were quite opposite. So maybe, Greg, just share a bit about young Greg and, you know, your early years. Greg
The formative years. What made what made the man the years that made the man who now is Greg? Sure. I think we did have different upbringings for sure. I grew up I had two parents in my home. I don't think I knew a single divorced family, actually, in our neighbor in our neighborhood. And we went to church on Sundays, and we we went to school. I was celebrated as an a student all the way through. My dad ran the local sporting goods store. And for any Canadian listener, you know the local sporting goods store that sells your hockey skates, sticks, and mountain bikes for the summer season. I mean, that is that is the meeting place. Whitney
Skate sharpening. Greg
Skate sharpenings. I mean, my dad says that our we were fed because of skate sharpening. If there wasn't if there weren't skates to sharpen, we would have been a hungry hungry family. So thank god for for hockey. And and I was that that was kinda my my daycare spot, really. My mom was stay at home and took great care of us. And when she needed a break, it was either off to a friend's place or off to the shop. And I spent hours and hours dusting bikes, building bikes, fixing bikes, and sharpening skates in the shop, from a really young age. And I think that that's just a huge part of what formed me and shaped me. And my grandparents grew they were not too far away, so we got to see them pretty regularly too, which is nice. So couldn't couldn't have been couldn't have been more different. Pretty pretty vanilla. Whitney
I know you've talked about your grandparents quite a bit. I I unfortunately didn't get the chance to to meet them, and these are the grandparents on your well, any of your grandparents, actually, I haven't had a chance to meet. But on your mom your dad's side in particular, you were quite close, and I believe your grandparents were pretty proper. Is that a fair statement? Greg
Yeah. I think you you get to meet my grandparents in spirit every time we sit down as a family for a meal. Sit up straight, chew with your mouth closed, elbows in, all that. That is that is grand. That is my my dad's mom. We were close to we were close to them growing up. They played a huge role in my life. Once I got my driver's license, I would pop up and grand would make waffles in the morning. My grandfather would be reading the newspaper and would quiz me on the latest in what's happening in business trends, stock picks. Once I joined the workforce, he was always looking for when our company was gonna go public. And when I worked at IBM, where I started my career, it was always news clippings and highlighted bits about where I was and and how I was doing, and they were just engaged in that way. And I think helped to reinforce that notion of just do well. You know? Just do well. They were they were proud of us, but it definitely influenced the way I showed up in the world, I think. I was Yeah. Trying to trying to please everybody is how I'd characterize it. Whitney
Okay. Alright. Yeah. It's funny when you say family dinners. I think that was a bit of a foreign concept a little bit. We had TV trays and, TVs in our bedrooms and, well, Christmas, probably, we would have dinner. But, yeah, it was a bit rare. But I I'm definitely I have learned so many things about, you know, eating at a table. Certain rules, pick the pick the piece of bread or whatever is being passed to you that's closest to you. You don't take the one that's further. Greg
Oh, yeah. Whitney
All these little things that, yeah, that that I've learned. Greg
Yeah. Our our listeners need to know. If you ever know which side does the bread plate go on and which side is the drink, which is your bread plate, which is your drink, if you put your hands down on your lap and you just form these circles, sort of put your pointer finger to your thumb, hold it down, the left side will make a b, and that is your bread side. And the right side will make a d, and that is your drink side. So hot tip, if you're ever at a fancy or formal dinner, that is where you find your bread and your dinner or your bread and your drink. And that didn't come from my grandmother because we were just forced to remember that, but a helpful trick now, that we can now teach the dinner. Whitney
So insightful. Greg
There you go. Whitney
Tips and tricks with Greg Boyd. Greg
But I I would say that I never I've never to this day, I've never had a TV dinner. So maybe you should we should do that sometime. Whitney
I've got it. TV shows? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's some still at the family cottage up north. Greg
So Whitney
yeah. We can give them a try. Yeah. Okay. So let's dig in a bit to schooling. And I guess, a little teaser here, but you went to private school. And if you would have told me that I would ever marry someone that went to private school, I don't even think I knew private school was a thing until I was maybe well into my twenties. But, yeah, if you told me I'd ever marry someone that went to private school, I would have laughed in your face. Greg
Yeah. I think if you'd told me I was gonna marry somebody who is out in the smoker bit, I also would have laughed in their face. So you and me were match made in heaven. Whitney
Yeah. Fair fair enough. Match match Greg
made in heaven, the two of us. But tell Whitney
tell our listeners just a bit about school, growing up, and then obviously, like, university and those years, which I think were pretty formative for you. Greg
For sure. I I think that they I think school school was a place where I think that I just was able to get some some good affirmation. I think I was always trying to I don't know who I was trying to impress, whether it's the teacher or my parents, but always I remember grades being super important to me. And my parents made a choice in grade seven to send me to, Holy Trinity School, which is a lovely private school in Richmond Hill, Ontario. And that was just a new environment for me. And I think when I look back on that so you've spent your first six, seven, eight years in one school, one group of friends. I got dropped into a whole different world. And this is actually a funny story. My dad was always a man looking for a bargain, and so he's a true, like, true entrepreneur. And he still still is. Whitney
He still is. Greg
And oh my god. Anyway, so many so many things that we could riff on in our life about how Ian Boyd shows up in our household, and it's it's great. Ian's my dad. But my grandfather, so my dad's dad, his neighbor either had passed away or he was just had gotten too old and couldn't drive a car anymore. And he had a, I don't know, nineteen seventy Oldsmobile, like velvet interior, brown, like you know, you remember those cars that had the three seat front seat? Do Do you remember those? Whitney
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like a bench. Greg
Yeah. And, like, a dial to change like, you turn a dial to change the radio station. Like, this was the car. And my dad said, this car has twenty thousand kilometers on it. This cannot just be given away. Like, this is a deal. And so my dad bought this nineteen seventy something brown, shitty Oldsmobile, and my dad drove us to private school. So we carpooled. It was me and a few other kids drove us to fucking private school in a nineteen seventy shitbox Oldsmobile. And you'd have kids rolling up in Mercedes and, like, Acuras and Porsches, and and then we rolled up in that. Yeah. Of course. I don't think I knew enough to be embarrassed when I went, but by the time I finished grade eight, it was the most terrifying thing to see that car pull up to pick you up. Like, I would just ask to get picked up by the and and I think that that was a context shift for me. I grew up in really humble small town where none nothing like that mattered and got dropped into a place where it was a whole different world for me. And there there were good people there, great teachers. I learned a lot, but I think the big learning for me was how to make friends, show up, and be a kind of different version of myself to a different version or different group of people and then go home, play hockey with the boys, the Stow Hill boys back at home. And I don't think I had a really good sense of who I authentically was, but I was able to figure out how to be in both those different places. And I was bullied a bit, but I think it was it was never, like, it was never anything that shattered me, but I actually feel like getting picked on in those years, which, again, note the old reveal was for good reason. And I was just an outsider. I think that I had other friends, and it never really rattled me too much because I just I had other friends, and these people just didn't seem to be my people when I was there. Whitney
Yeah. And you only went for two years. Right? And then you got to grade nine, went to high school. Greg
Yeah. And from there off to Wilfrid Laurier University, which brought me to this fine town. And we talked about it in our last episode. We might have passed ourselves in the hallways, pregnant Whitney. This pregnant pregnant girl, you just don't even look at the pregnant girl walking down the halls. When you're when you're kind of in your early twenties, that's the last thing you wanna think about. This is not a possibility. Whitney
You're like, do you know the bright future I have ahead of me? Yeah. Alright. Awesome. So that's great context. I think you've been an overachiever. I think I'll say the word overachiever. You wrote a whole blog about it, which maybe I'll touch on. But you know, you were, you always cared a lot about your grades and I want to say appearance, but it's not really, but just how you, Greg
you know, Whitney
yeah, how you show up in the world. I know that you had a stretch of time where your life, you would describe your life as kind of on autopilot. And, yeah, just share maybe a bit about that time in your life, went to university. There's a lot that happened, I think, post university. Greg
Yeah. Well, lot of life happened in those university years. My mom doesn't remember this, but when they were dropping me off on the first day of school, she said she turned to me when I was in the back seat, and she said, this town doesn't know what just hit them. And she might have meant it not as a compliment, but I took it as a compliment. I think she probably meant it as a compliment. But Whitney
As you would. Default. You're like, oh, yeah. I'm amazing. Greg
Greg is here. And I I definitely tore into the university experience and looked to make the most of it, made a lot of great friends, and met Allison. And Allison and I met really early on in the first couple of weeks of university. We were on a committee together. And at Laurier at the time, I I'm I hope it's still the same way. You had to apply to be a volunteer for things, and it was cool to be a volunteer of things at at Laurier. And and I was able to get into some cool volunteer clubs, no smoke or pit. And No. It definitely definitely matched my sensibilities. And we met and really hit off, a relationship. And I had a girlfriend at home at the time and, of course, turkey dump thing. And over the course of those four years, Allison and I did a lot of that together and, again, with some great friends. But I think that's where I think for me, things sort of while I I was finding this authentic version of myself, I was also starting to feel like, shit. You know? I've got this woman who I I think I might love and, you know, what do you do next? You kinda get married. Right? And you get a job and, like, things just start to go. Life just starts to take you. So I I I started to line myself up for that. Graduate from university, great marks through the the latter years of my of my schooling, and it was all about get a good job. Did that. Started my career at IBM. Get get engaged because our parents wouldn't let us live together until we were engaged, which seems laughable now. But now we're engaged. Now we can live together. Great. Get married. Get a promotion. Have a kid. And along came William and have another kid, and along came Maxwell and have another kid, which is crazy, and along came Madison. And and I think so much is happening. It was just moving so quickly. It just feels like those years were a blur. And I was just trying to figure, well, who the hell am I now with a kid? I'm trying to be an executive at a tech company, and I'm trying to trying to achieve all these things, and that was an identity that I didn't really understand. Whitney
Is it like how does how does executive Greg now become dad Greg? And, yeah, how to balance that? Greg
This guy never wanted a minivan, a white picket fence, and, like, the puppy at home. That was never a thing that I wanted, but I don't think I ever said that. I don't think I ever I don't think I ever voiced that. I think I knew that I didn't want a very, quote, unquote, normal life, but I I was just all in everything about being this overachiever, this person who went to great marks, with a great job, with a great life, with a beautiful wife and beautiful kids, it's all about kind of fitting into a box. And so it was happening to me for sure. Whitney
And so I think at this point, life's taking long. Right? Like, anybody in the outside looking in, it's like these guys are crushing it. Greg
Totally. I think for I think there's something that I always found fascinating in your story, which was and you and I met shortly, I think, shortly after William was born. When we met, it's a genuine moment, and it has nothing there's nothing romantic about it. But we met Cole was five, and we were four at the time. And you were in California and at a conference, and I was trying to figure out how does executive Greg become dad Greg and husband Greg and all all of the things that I was trying to balance. And seeing that you were an engaged mother, you're a successful person with a great career, I went, oh, there is a way to do that. I didn't have any real examples of that in my life because a lot of the people that were around me were really young and having their kids or were really old and had grown kids. I didn't have a lot of people around me with with kids kind of in that five to ten range, and meeting you did give me a a bit of an moment of, oh, you know, maybe there's maybe there's a way to find a balance. Maybe you can travel to California, go to a conference, and be an engaged parent and a sort of a good partner and good parents and all those things. And and maybe there is a way to blend that together. Whitney
Yeah. But you were in California too. Right. Greg
Yeah. But, I mean, I had support at home, and that was all in place. You, I mean, you were really on your own, but, I mean, you'd also you were talking about the husband you'd split up with and this great relationship that you maintained together and the fact that you were had navigated and found a way to support each other. It was a whole different context that was completely opposite from my kind of vanilla upbringing, and I thought, oh, there there's different ways to do this, and it just felt like you, in that moment, I I I was intrigued at this idea that there's another way, I suppose. Okay. Whitney
So I think let's fast forward. Twenty twenty was a incredibly hard year for so many people, but you and your family, in particular. So, yeah, tell us a bit about what happened when when twenty twenty hit. Greg
So I think it's relevant to share for for some context that I was I was at a great company called Axonify, and we were on this exciting growth path. And you had actually joined the the team, and we were both working there. And coming into twenty twenty, it was you know, I had just been officially made a member of the executive team. Life is kicking along in in a pretty good in a pretty good way. You I mean, you would remember those were just some of, I think, the best years career wise. They're we had a great team, and the company was just humming along. It was great. And coming into twenty twenty, Allison and I had, I think, navigated. You know, Madison was born, so we had William Maxwell and Madison. We're out of the acute traumatic baby phase and into the pain cave of the early years of parenting for sure. And I think it was a bit it was intended to be a bit of a reset moving into a new phase. So I think I mean, we've been together for fifteen years, We had grown up together. We had done so much. We'd been through so much life together. Outside of that, just her work and no more kids planned. And so finally, now a chance for her to just completely reengage there and go all in on what was her mission. She was so involved in a nonprofit that's a huge and hugely impactful organization in our community, and she was building the strategy that was going to be implemented to help eliminate the cycles of poverty for new sellers in our in our community. And just she had the strength to present that strategy to the regional council somehow. She couldn't see. She hardly she had to be driven there, and she couldn't see her notes, but somehow delivered this strategy publicly. And we have that all recorded, and it was incredible that she did that. But, I mean, having that opportunity to have the impact that she could have had on the world, just have that all ripped away just, yeah, just felt so unfair to her. So at the end of or, I guess, through the middle of January, Allison started to just get these headaches. They'd be terrible. I remember being horribly frustrated with her, that she'd be in bed on a Sunday. And then or on a Saturday, I'd I'd be running around covering the kids, and I was just I remember I mean, I'd be bothered by that. Like, why is she still sleeping? And it was also strange as well, so I think I was just a bit frustrated about that. But then it got weird because her she started to share that her vision was blurry. She couldn't see things properly, and that was weird. And the headaches just got worse and worse and worse. So it went from sort of irritation and frustration on my part to some concern, and we had a trip planned to go away on family day weekend in February to visit her grandparents or her grandfather in Ottawa. And she couldn't she couldn't go. The pain was too intense. And she was able to get in to the hospital. So she went in where they just did an X-ray, I believe. They just did something, and they gave her some, like, legit horse steroid cocktail of something pretty intense and booked her in for an MRI on what would be the Tuesday morning of the family day weekend. So we spent the weekend at home, and she slept for most of it. And she went in on the Tuesday morning, three AM, MRI. And then at noon that day on Tuesday, I was at the office working away and got a phone call from her that we needed to come in because they wanted to talk to us in the doctor's office, and that's never good news. I remember that drive pretty vividly. And we sat down with our doctor, and they said that she had a tumor that was growing on the base of her brain, so on her brain stem, and didn't know the severity of it, but didn't know that it it was serious, and that was likely causing the headaches in the in the vision. So the next couple of weeks were just a blur of appointments, and we got the conclusion or the diagnosis that it was a high grade or high grade glioblastoma. And so it was incurable, inoperable, and likely had, you know, four to eighteen months to live sort of thing. And that was, yeah, that was wild. Whitney
It's it will just, like, always just make me so emotional. Sorry. It just does. Because I just remember you coming in to the office because we were together at the time, and I think we had a trip planned. Greg
Yes. We did. We were going to Florida. Whitney
Yeah. And so we had this QBR we were running with one of our largest customers, and he came in and he said, I have to I have to talk to you. So we, like, went into this small meeting room and, like, I'll just never forget that moment. You're like, Allison has brain cancer. I'm like, I might as well have just blank like, I just whacked out. Like, that makes no sense. What do you like, no. She doesn't. Like, I think I might have even said that. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I know I remember feeling just so angry. I've I've never journaled. I've never been a journaler, but I'm just through that time, and I didn't know Allison well. Obviously, we worked together. I know I knew you better, but, Allison was incredible. Like and, I just remember feeling, like, so angry on behalf of her and her family and you and your family and the kids. Like, it was just so incredibly frustrating. And this and this is, you know, me, like, third party. So, like, what were you feeling at the time? Can you even put that in towards? Like Greg
Yeah. So I think this will this will serve for a whole and and probably an entire conversation on its own, but to to kinda go to the the big picture of it. And I remember that conversation too. That was, hey. I think we're gonna need to change our flights. Like, it was just such a a weird, hey. We're gonna have to change this meeting and this big thing, and I think I was just trying to keep it all together. Whitney
Yeah. For sure. Totally. Greg
And operating in different contexts. So we we we got that diagnosis. Her mobility was impacted immediately because of the the biopsy that they had to do. So she lost the use of her legs really and and the right side of her body, and her speech became really problematic. It was just a a real mess, and so I think my mode went into just intense I guess that question when sitting around that fire in California of, like, what's it like to be a what's it like to be a dad and a an employee? It just all came into mode of, like, well, I think this is just my this is my thing now, and I'm just gonna grab whatever the wheel of this thing is and figure out how to keep it from going entirely off the rails. Whitney
You're always an involved father from what I understood. Right? But I think you went from a bit of a passenger at home to, like, right into the driver's seat. Like, I mean, you had to figure out everything on top of COVID because this is now March twenty twenty. Right? Greg
Yeah. I think, yeah, the most for William, if you ever listens to this, my oldest I think the worst birthday ever was William's first birth fifth birthday party where that was the day. It was March thirteenth, and the schools were shut down that day, and COVID was becoming a thing. I was figuring out how to plan a birthday party, first of all. That would yes. I was an engaged father, but that was not my lane. And and so, you know, it was already gonna be just a shitty birthday party, but we had friends lined up and all the things. And and then, you know, everyone had to cancel. Nobody could come. And so we had all this pizza and William just sort of sitting around, and we're trying to make him feel like, yes. Mom's over there and not doing so well. Happy birthday, buddy. It was just this almost, like, dark comedic moment of, I think, a center point of this horrible, set of circumstances happening around us. Whitney
Which is why now we do a lot for William's birthday. Yeah. Greg
William, we try to make your birthday special for sure. And and so I think the mode was, yeah, hardcore just parent mode. And with the arrival of COVID, the business, that we were both a part of, so Axonify I mean, fifty percent of our customer base was retailers. So you had this pairing of crisis at home for for me and everyone starting to figure out what is this COVID thing all about. So crisis mode for everybody, but also the business was just now in panic mode. Will we be able to pay our bills? And our CEO approached me and was very empathetic and said, horrible what's happening, but could you like, are you able to make some calls? Can we like, how how how might you be able to lean in and and support this? And I will say that actually was really helpful. So through the month of March and April, I think that being needed at work might have seemed like a kind of a ridiculous thing, but I think it was actually quite helpful for me. We kinda got things sorted on the work front, and then we got to May and concluded that there was no treatment really that was working or useful for Allison at that point, and so it was now moving her into palliative care at the beginning of May. Her parents brought her back to her family home in London for that, so that meant the kids could come home to our family home here. And I wrapped up work at the end of May, and Allison passed away in June. So just a day shy of four months from her diagnosis. And I was able to be there for that, which was, I I think, a hugely impactful moment. I think that there's not not many people have the shitty privilege of just being with somebody when they pass away, but it, I think, was closure and gave me, I think, the the ability to process a lot of what was happening while it was going on. And I think what a lot of people didn't know too is that, well, Allison couldn't speak too well. She was quite impacted by the by the biopsy. We had these very, very slow but very thoughtful conversations through the months of March and April. May by May, there wasn't much left to say, but we were able to process a little bit, and she was able to articulate her wishes for me and how she wanted me to live and how she wanted the kids to be cared for. And one of the hopes she had for me was that that I would not be alone and that our kids would have somebody to raise them. Now I'm emotional. Whitney
Yeah. I know. Greg
Me too. And I think I think people didn't know that, that and so I think that gave talk about going from autopilot in my in my own life to, to step into the driver's seat. I think that that forced everything to come into just acute focus and being given kind of marching orders from from your from your wife, makes it pretty clear what you need to do next. And I think what was challenging as people were dealing with COVID on their own terms for their own families was people who didn't know how to support and didn't know how to help and didn't know how to lean in for me and for the kids. And I give no I I hold nothing against anyone. And some of you might wind up listening to this, and I hope you do and find it, kind of in some way maybe freeing, because I think people just didn't know how to help. And I think some of the people who are closest to us just weren't there and couldn't be. They just didn't know how to be. But I think you and a small handful of other people figured out how to be supportive and how to show up, and I think that that just meant the world to to me and to the kids and just reshaped what life was gonna be like on the other side of this crazy time, whether it was dropping off food or playing a late night Euchre game. Virtually. Virtually. Virtually. COVID. To be clear. And just being available, I think that that helped to show me and then helped me to show the kids that there's there's another side to this and that things were gonna continue and that we would have a new chapter in our life as a family. What that meant for me professionally, I think, was a bit of a question mark, but I think I had all the clarity I needed in terms of what was important to me. And that I think that when we talk about what what is this whole what is this all about and what is being intentional about, like, those are some of the most clear and intentional months of my life. But I wouldn't wish an experience like that on anybody to force them into that place. And so I think it's it's more about how can you how can you just not wait for that terrible thing to happen for you to go from being a bit of a passenger in your life into taking control. I think it just felt like something that was gonna be an important part of my life at some point, because it's not like I was distant. I hadn't I hadn't, ruined my relationship with my kids or my wife or my community. I was trying to spin all the plates and keep them all spinning in the air as I was doing all the different things, but at some point, it comes to a head. And I think it's an unsustainable way to live when you're just a passenger in your own life. Whitney
Yeah. That's a I think this is I think at the heart of everything we're doing is that. Greg
I wasn't intentionally going there to be like but I think this has come up every time I've shared the story in the context of Vienna Waits. It is is that it it feels like the punchline in all of this is that it's not like my life wasn't going along well. I think my life was going along great. But I did feel a little bit like I did have a fucking minivan, and I did have a white picket fence, although it was black. And we didn't have a dog, but we had this, quote, unquote, perfect life, but something didn't feel authentic about it to me. And I'm think my my mission, I suppose, or purpose from that experience became, well, how how can the millions of other people who feel that same sort of sense of, you know, is this it? Like, life's pretty good. I should be grateful, but I just don't feel something. There's something missing. Well, don't wait for a diagnosis, a a catastrophe, a horrible thing to be the thing that pushes you from being a passenger to the driver of your life. I think what we've been through, Whitney, in shaping a life together, we've proven to ourselves and to others that you can you can be intentional about setting up a life that you want through yourself. And I think you and I always feel this impending crisis around the corner. It just feels like there's there's we don't know what the next chapter will bring, and so it feels like every day is so precious. So let's get after it. Whitney
And I think this is really at the heart of everything we're doing with Vienna Waits and, you know, helping people to realize that life is short. It can be gone in an instant. You really don't know, and there's no guarantees. And so making the most of it, being intentional with the choices you're making, it's really all, at the heart of of that story. Greg
And I think you've said it best, this idea of if we're not running toward a life that we love, what are we doing? Whitney
What's the point? Greg
Yeah. We should be. We should be, like, screaming and running toward things that make us excited and inspire us, but as that can feel scary, and so we stay where we are. And, again, we're in a privileged spot where where we are is pretty great and good for us, but there's more to life, and there's an impact that we can all have in a different way that can make life so much richer. Thank you for listening to the Unblock Yourself podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to follow and rate the podcast. Your ratings and feedback mean the world to us. We'd love to stay connected with you via our biweekly newsletter called the VNF five, where we share ideas and advice that we found helpful on our own journey to live with more intention. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram. For those Gen z listeners out there, no, we're not on TikTok. But if enough of you ask for it, we'll just have to do it at some point. The links to find us on social are in the show notes. The Unblock Yourself podcast is edited and produced by Bespoke Productions Hub. Thank you for being here. 
