My passions in life are spending time with Penny, my wife of 51 years, and my granddaughter (both in person and via Skype), helping my clients, and cycling.

A couple years after Penny and I achieved our dream of moving to sunny Florida, I found myself in the biggest funk of my life. I wallowed in that funk for quite some time until one day, I finally decided to take charge of my life, and committed to pulling myself out of my funk. I made the decision to chronicle my journey of coming up from being down in the dumps, and that is the topic of my book, Overcoming Your Funk: Practical Advice and Strategies for Reigniting Your Spirit and Taking Charge of Your Life.

Today—I can say without any hesitation—I am living my best life.

I came out on the other side of that black hole a changed man with a new life mission: to make a positive, profound, and significant difference in people’s lives—every day. I’m fortunate in that I earn my living doing just that. Hearing from my clients you’re the man who gave me back my happiness never grows old. I love helping my clients discover and overcome the barriers that are holding them back from achieving and enjoying personal and professional success.

One of the many things that put me in a funk is that I had gained weight. A lot of weight. I started walking, then powerwalking, and finally graduated to riding a bicycle to burn calories. “Bike riding to burn calories” turned into real cycling. I now cycle 125+ miles each week, with many of my rides 50+ miles. I’ve now done four century (100 miles+) rides. Cycling gives me time to think and be with myself. It’s low impact, great conditioning, and gives me an opportunity to see places I wouldn’t get to see by foot or by car. It’s fun to constantly challenge myself to go farther and faster.

One day in 2012, I was struggling as I was pedaling into a headwind. A couple of women cycled past me and I complained to them about the headwinds. One of them turned back and said, “Headwinds make you stronger.” Now, I love riding into headwinds, as they indeed make me stronger. As in life headwinds (adversity) makes you challenge your thoughts and ways of problem solving. I love the challenge of solving “wicked” problems; problems that don’t have a “managed or engineered” solution to them. They can seem overwhelming, just like cycling 100 miles with 42 of the miles being all hills. You have to get your mind around it before your body will be up to the challenge. Like I say, “your passion and drive to live your dream needs to be so intense, that you embrace the hardships you will endure to achieve it." There’s no better feeling of complete accomplishment then finishing a tough ride. No one to help, no one pushing, it all comes from inside.

In my spare time, in addition to cycling and my family time, I love to read.