Two Year Life Update
June 2023 - June 2025: What I'm working on now
About two years ago, I was in Morocco waiting at the airport for one of my best friends, who would go on to become my lover, partner, and ex.
After months of traveling around Europe, I had settled in Tamraght, a little surf town for about a month. My ex was coming to visit for a week, just as a friend. After some romantic ups and downs, we’d made the decision to call it off. I was determined to stick to the plan. But, as love so delightfully does, it overtook our intentions and pulled us along, so that in September 2023, I was moving into an apartment with her in London.
Around the same time, I started a job at One Year No Beer, an awesome company which helps people stop drinking. It was my dream job. I was doing deep trauma work with some of the coolest people I’ve ever met, and helping them to recover their lives from alcohol use. As Jerry Colonna always says, it was good work, done well, for the right reasons.
This February, while in Guatemala, I sent my final text to my ex after months of painful reconnection attempts. On the same day, I resigned from my job at OYNB to go all in on my own business goals. Somehow the two things that had started a year and a half earlier came to a halt at the exact same time.
Now, some four months later, I’m looking back at that day, and feeling a sort of melancholy for the times which almost feel like they didn’t happen. It’s strange how life goes like that. I lived in London with the love of my life, and was doing my dream job. Now, I’m back in my hometown, pretty much where I started.
And I’m not saying this in a “poor me” way. I’m incredibly grateful for her and for my job. Even though those paths closed, they were huge catalysts for me to become who I am. I got to experience the deepest love of my life thus far, and do coaching work on a level I never had before. It was an epic adventure.
One time, on vacation with my ex, we sailed to a dreamy beach off the coast of Santa Marta, Colombia… after which I had one of the best coaching calls of my life, with a multi-millionaire business tycoon—That’s not something to regret. Just because things end, doesn’t mean they have to be forever mourned.
Needless to say, it’s been an expansive couple years. After my ex and I broke up last August, I moved to Central America and spent seven months paragliding in Valle de Bravo, dancing at Lake Atitlan, and grieving the loss of my relationship through an intentional break from all things dating, love, and romance.
While away, I made so many new friends I can’t keep track of them all, saw some of the most beautiful sunsets of my life, and started to really learn what self-love is. I literally flew through clouds above volcanos, danced until my body transcended the ordinary into ecstatic, and found a tribe unlike any other I had before.
But after almost five years of traveling the world and living abroad, I started to really miss my home—my friends, my family, and the forests of my youth.
And so, in May this year, I returned home, no job, no relationship, and a future wide open. I started working with a new coach, uncovering deep inner child wounds around receiving abundance. I took a hard look in the mirror and asked: What is my life really for?
In 2022, after I published my first book, I set off on a global adventure to answer the question: “How can I make the most of my life?” And, I’ve done what many people could only dream of. I coached astronauts, dined with models in Paris, and watched storms roll in from the mountains of Como. And, I won’t lie, it was pretty epic.
But, at the end of the day, all those experiences left me hollow. They didn’t scratch that deeper itch. What I’ve realized is that there is only one thing that sincerely answers my question. To make the most of life, I must:
Have the courage to be my highest self. And for me, that means going all in on building community, healing relationships, and creating joy, presence, and safety in the world.
To that end, I am devoting myself to my mission with a more resolute heart than ever before. In the past, when I’ve gone into building businesses, it’s been to make money, to prove myself, to earn something. Now, It’s to serve, to sincerely offer myself to the world, and say, “Here I am. I’m here to help.”
And as I’ve taken some time to sit with how I want to do that, and there are a few seeds that are emerging that I’d like to share with you.
Relational Coaching
The first thing is an evolved coaching practice. Where many coaches work on a transactional level, I’m experimenting with a relational coaching dynamic, where it’s not a matter of session by session payment, but a safe and healing relationship container. The highest predictor of a successful therapeutic relationship is the quality of the relationship between provider and client. So, why not go all in on that?
And rather than a set price, the investment conversation is part of the healing. Can we learn to be human during financial negotiation? Can we make agreements that feel healing to scarcity mindsets, and which create reciprocal and mutually supportive commitments?
My first relational coaching client has this to say about it:
Beyond that, I’m also starting to offer relationship coaching, but not just for romantic partnerships. This is coaching with your parents, your best friends, your roommates. Healing happens in relationship, and so if you want to grow, bringing your people into the coaching container can expedite how quickly and effectively transformation can happen, especially when there’s conflict.
I’m opening a few slots for coaching clients to start in July, if you know anyone who might be a good fit for a deeper coaching process like this. It’s especially good for people you see who have tried therapy or other resources but they didn’t work, for people you love who are stuck and not motivated, or for those you know who are deep in grief.
(I’ll also be launching a couple courses in the next few months about presence, trauma, and nervous system healing.)
Epic Adventure Trips
The second thing I’m working on building is a sort of adventure travel company merged with life coaching. I’m going to be organizing retreats and travel experiences around the world, pulling from my last 8 years of globetrotting and self-development. These trips are going to merge things like scuba diving, paragliding, and hiking with journal entries, sound baths, group workshops, and guided meditations.
I envision people having the literal time of their lives somewhere they’ve always wanted to go, surrounded by amazing humans, AND exploring their deepest fears, biggest dreams, and the blocks they’re feeling. I want people to feel like they’ve been yanked from their ordinary lives and dropped into a vat of sheer possibility—transformation central.
The first group event I’m hosting is a retreat in my hometown this September 5-7. If you want to learn more, you can find info for it here!
(Next year, I’m planning a trip to the Canary Islands! Could be fun for my UK/Europe folks.)
Community Living Summit
The biggest thing on my list of projects is something that will take my lifetime and beyond to really accomplish.
Like I mentioned, in my travels and coaching work, I’ve realized just how important community is, and that it’s a big part of my mission here on this Earth to call people into community.
In Guatemala, I lived at a little co-living place called Fungi Academy (they’re adamant it’s not a commune).
Last week, I connected with an old college friend of mine, Sammi, and we nerded out about community life. We both feel deeply called to create a physical place where people can come to feel safe, to play, to discover themselves, to meet their true calling, to dance, to sing, to drink coffee, to read books, to network and connect with other humans… And maybe eventually to live—It’s a whole vibe.
And honestly, this is a single dream that I’ve felt called to build for the last six years. It’s never gone away. Sometimes it’s here stronger than others, but it’s always here. And it’s about time I make it happen.
So, Sammi and I are planning to host an online summit later this summer for all the people we know who are interested in the future of co-being. This isn’t co-working or co-living. It’s CO-BEING. That’s the village we need. That’s the future of humanity.
If you’re interested, let me know!
Men’s Work
Lastly, I’ve been feeling called more and more deeply into doing men’s work in the world. I believe the biggest issue in our world today is that men aren’t taking ownership of our need to grow and heal. For a long time, women and gender nonconforming people have been doing the inner work to feel safe in a patriarchal world. And today, men are starting to fall behind. And we’re feeling it. Suicide and depression rates are up. Loneliness in men is a huge thing. Men need help. We need community.
So, I’m starting an organization called The Crucible, which I envision as an online platform where any man can go to start their healing and self-growth journey. The Crucible will also host coming of age ceremonies and rites of passage, men’s retreats, and men’s circles. It’s all about collaboration. In a world where the male role models are almost entirely singular men, offering a vulnerable and open space for co-discovery of masculinity is a powerful turn away from the toxic, Lone Wolf mentality.
If you’re interested, I’m starting out in partnership with Fungi Academy, hosting free, monthly men’s circles, which are open to all who are called. You can sign up and find more info here. The next one is July 9!
I’m also doing corporate workshops now for men’s health. I did one with Lululemon today!
Sooo, WOOF. Big update.
It’s pretty crazy that I can write a weekly blog and not talk about many of the things that have happened in my life. It feels good to put it all down so clearly.
It’s not easy to go through heartbreak. It’s not easy to look back at my dream job, and know that it’s over.
But the space of what we lose creates the space for what’s yet to come. And, I am beyond grateful for the future, because it holds all the fruits of each and every seed I am planting now.
And I’m grateful for the present, for being surrounded by loving relationships, and for being in a home that I love and feel safe in. I’m grateful to be building what I’m here to create.
Life has a funny way of taking us where we need to go, and it’s always a balance of surrendering to what’s happening and bringing a powerful intention to the chaos.
Thank you for being here along for my journey!
Blessings,
Faolan
PS. If you’re familiar with Human Design, I am indeed a manifesting generator—LOL. It was so validating when I read that it’s normal for Mani Gens to work on a million things at once. It’s just how I roll!
Here are a few ways you can support my work and stay connected:
🍓 Become a paid subscriber to get access to exclusive meditations and group calls.
🌀 Book a 1:1 coaching discovery call
🌍 Join an upcoming retreat (next one is Sept 2025 in Massachusetts)
📚 Read my book Why Live? The Beautiful and Painful Mess of Learning to Love Life
💬 Invite me to speak or facilitate at your event or organization
To explore more, visit www.faolan.com