Part 1: My Story of Compartmentalization and Integration

Estimated reading time: 9-11 minutes

I discovered an unconventional way you might be holding yourself back from owning who you are, preventing you from unlocking your full potential.

It involves compartmentalization and integration, and we’ll need two parts to explore fully.

In Part 1, I share my story to give you the context for what I mean by these terms. Part 2 will break things down so that you can take action and apply it to your life if that feels right.

Earlier this week, I talked with Heidi, a friend tackling an ambitious project exploring how we might encode humanity into AI. As I felt my energy and excitement growing, I had an opportunity to tell her a part of my story most people don’t know, which sparked one of the more profound breakthroughs I’ve ever had.

Curiosity + Experimentation + Vulnerability

We have to take a trip down memory lane to tell this story. In future posts, I’ll detail each life phase, but today, you’re getting the key events and themes.

Growing up, I did everything and anything I could get my hands on. I’m grateful to have had parents who encouraged my exploration and embraced my experimental approach to nearly everything. They recognized my ability to quickly grasp things, try them, and decide if it was right for me. My energy and curiosity were my guides. But then expectations around “career” started to creep in.

At an early age, I was fascinated by what makes us who we are and why we behave the way we do. I noticed that I had an innate ability to connect with people on a deeper level and to hold space for them to be vulnerable. In some senses, I knew this would be a crucial part of my story and career, but I couldn’t see how it fit into the path I was “supposed” to go down, so I kept it compartmentalized.

Another area where I did this was with my talents around holding space for people. I’ll never forget this one moment when I was at a party in 8th grade…and I got sucker punched. Chaos erupted. My mom showed up and started letting the kid have it. Eventually, she demands, “Tell me why you hit my son!” With his head down, deep in fear and shame, he mutters, “All the girls talk to Adam and not to me.” I was stunned. At that moment, I decided that holding space and listening to people would get me in trouble, and I didn’t want any more pain.

In both of these cases, I started to compartmentalize important parts of myself because I couldn’t see how they fit together, and in some cases, caused me great pain.

Psychology + Story Telling + Startups

Fast forward a few years, and I discovered photography. You could almost say that I was called to it. One of the reasons I love photography is that it’s a powerful way to tell stories. It allows me to explore and tell stories of people and places. But being a photographer didn’t feel “practical” as a career, even though I was and am incredibly talented. I heard narratives of how hard it is to be a photojournalist, how challenging it is to make a living, and so forth.

Guess what I did? I compartmentalized it to the realm of “someday.”

I went to college and instead majored in marketing, psychology, and entrepreneurship.

That’s when my well-researched master plans emerged:

• Option A: become an ad executive who understands human behavior, make a bunch of money, retire, and travel.

• Option B: become a consultant, find a big problem, start a company, sell it and make millions, retire and travel.

I minored in psychology to satisfy my desire to understand people better. Yet I never pursued anything beyond that because being a therapist didn’t feel like the right fit either, and it didn’t fit into Option A or B. Neither did being a photographer. But I still had those skills nicely tucked away and ready to explore after I “retired.”

Transition + Reinvention

I started my career at Deloitte, which lasted nine months, then I went to the Kauffman Foundation and left in 2011 to start a company with my boss. I worked there for three years, had the time of my life, and spectacularly burned out.

I wandered for the next few years professionally as I dealt with my demons and healed my wounds. My wandering helped me realize I had a knack for transition and reinvention. Little did I know that I had first developed that as a kid thanks to moving every few years to new cities, and now as an adult, taking on different roles across industries and companies.

Personal AI + Mental + Emotional Health

In 2014, I accidentally started working with chatbots. My startup built the first chatbot you could use to order pizza from Domino’s by having a conversation over Slack or text. It was an extremely basic prototype and leveraged zero AI. Still, it showed me a possible future I hadn’t considered—the ability to talk to machines like talking to a friend or coworker.

I left to take care of my mental health in 2015, but I never forgot about the vision I had for a chatbot that could one day communicate with any application to get things done.

While working through my depression and anxiety at the time, I started to imagine a chatbot that was optimized to support people like me with our mental and emotional well-being. I named the envisioned bot Daisy. I wasn’t in a spot to take on this vision as my work with my mental health was more important at that time, but the seed was planted.

Artificial Intelligence + Data

Later, in 2015, I met Heidi when she hired me at Singularity. It was a place where I was exposed to the bleeding edge of technological advancement and thinking, including AI. I started to understand what was about to be possible as various technologies converged to unlock new futures and opportunities most of us couldn’t imagine.

I made new connections, opened new doors, learned new things, and started building my brand. I became known as a creative marketer, a masterful storyteller, an efficient problem solver, an experimentation geek, and a leader.

Therapy and Personal Transformation

In parallel, from 2013 to 2017, with the help of medication, my therapist, and a few personal transformation programs, I was able to clear out things that were holding me back…

Burnout at my first startup, loved ones battling addiction, dysfunctional relationships including a failed relationship and called-off wedding, beliefs that weren’t serving me, values that were misaligned, damaging behaviors, and so much more came to the surface. Through this journey, I developed new skills that forever changed my life and resulted in The Mandate, a podcast season where I interviewed men about their mental and emotional well-being.

I knew this was a world I was meant to play in, but how it would all come together escaped me.

Spirituality and Consciousness

While on this wild ride, I met my wife, Cori. She opened my mind, heart, and soul to the spiritual side, which took me on a side quest through a world I knew little about. As I connected with newly discovered realms of self-exploration, more possibilities became available.

In 2018, we both realized that San Francisco was not the place for us long-term, and we whittled down our future place to be either Seattle or Austin. I knew I needed to go to Austin, but we were both leaning toward Seattle. And on a whim, after visiting Austin only once, Cori picked Austin. Had that not happened, I wouldn’t have met Steve - my future business partner and one of my best friends.

Completing a significant life milestone and goal

In 2020, I heard Steve was working on voice assistants, using AI to help companies access their data. He asked if I wanted to do some consulting, and I said yes. Six months later, we started Responsum. His vision was to help companies access their data with AI chatbots and voice assistants; my vision was to enable people to use chatbots to get work done without having to switch between dozens of applications throughout the day and search for answers spread across those same systems.

And deep down inside, this was a learning opportunity to see if Daisy was now possible.

After numerous pivots, the emergence of generative AI, being in the right space at the right time, and the sheer act of survival… we were acquired. This was a massive milestone for me, but I didn’t fully grasp its significance until my conversation months later with Heidi.

I needed time and space for the integration to start to settle in.

The breakthrough

While Steve and I were building Responsum, I tried to steer us towards something that resembled Daisy and personal AI. My co-founder knew about my passion for mental health, unleashing potential, supporting transitions, and transformation. While he supported those parts of me, it didn’t resonate with him, which meant it was the wrong direction for us as business partners.

Naturally, I did what I’d conditioned myself to do: compartmentalize and hide. Candidly, I was always worried it would interfere with Responsum, and I didn’t want to jeopardize our success.

In September 2023, we were acquired. I had achieved a lifelong goal of starting and selling a company.

(It’ll still be a minute before I retire and travel forever. I’m just getting started.)

Over the last six months, I’ve had the space to explore what a complete integration of my strengths and interests might look like. I also became aware of how taxing it is to spread out my energy in a different way than I talked about in this post. In this instance, I was blocking off essential parts of me from connecting.

All the parts are valuable individually and contribute to who I am, but they pale compared to what might be possible when they all come together.

As Aristotle lays out in Metaphysics, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

It took a serendipitous conversation with a friend for me to see that.

I was transported into a zen-like state when everything clicked into place on the call. My vision streamed out in a passionate explanation of how I saw everything I had initially kept compartmentalized fitting together. At that moment, I understood that I would be out of alignment and not fully owning who I am by continuing to separate these parts of me.

Most importantly, I’d be withholding my energy and capability from the people who need it.

When we compartmentalize things, it comes with a cost. It might make sense for a short time and even produce excellent results, but the equation doesn’t make sense over the long term.

When we allow ourselves to integrate our interests, passions, and skills, the math changes and the potential is unlimited.

While I still don’t know exactly what this part of my journey will manifest as, I know I am called to bring together all of me, creating a unique space that only I occupy.

My unique space

I’m at my best when I operate at the convergence of four spaces: the technological, the mental-emotional, the physical, and the spiritual. Not only am I at my best, I have a unique perspective to share.

By embracing these spaces, I believe we can unlock true human potential for everyone. Imagine a world where everyone you meet shows up authentically as who they are and that we’re all genuinely pursuing what we’re called to.

My role is to bridge the gap and create the space for this convergence.

I believe in the transformative power of technology, specifically AI, to bring us together and unlock more of our potential. I acknowledge that there is tremendous risk on the other side of that equation as well. I want to ensure humanity is equipped to navigate what’s coming, which will require the integration of everything I’ve spent the first 37 years of my life exploring.

What’s next?

You can’t see me, but I’m staring at my screen because I can’t believe I wrote this. On the one hand, it’s missing so many details; if I wrote them all, you’d be reading my autobiography. On the other hand, I’m relieved that I’m finally publishing this and intentionally bringing it all together.

No more worrying about posting my newsletter to LinkedIn or whether you’ll be interested in what I have to say about AI. It’s a relief, and it comes with another realization…

I might not be for everyone, and that’s ok.

Thank you for reading and giving me the gift of your attention. I hope that Part 1 sparked some inspiration for you to explore where you might be compartmentalizing different parts of you that naturally want and need to come together.

In Part 2, we’ll explore in more depth what was happening behind the scenes, and you’ll get some practical actions and experiments you can run to unlock your insights.

An offer…

To close, I have an offer for you. In writing this piece, I came up with a technique to create what I call your Purpose Narrative. A piece of writing that brings together and unleashes the best of you. It’s highly experimental, but if you’re curious and want to try it out with me, hit reply. My only ask is that you come with an open mind and willingness to tell me about your life without holding back.

Have an incredible week 🙏 💖 🔥