Few people reach where they are looking to go without some form of personal transformation. In this episode, Stephen Jaye talks with Rick Harrigan, whose story of personal transformation involves having what he thought he was supposed to have but coming to the realization that it was not the right place for him. He reached a point where he could not take it anymore. It’s a place a lot of people find themselves in. “I don’t know what I want to do; I just know I can’t do this anymore.” Rick now helps others who are in need of similar transformations through his holistic purpose-driven consulting service. Join in this conversation as he takes us throughout his journey, all the while offering some great insights and inspiration to help those of us who are looking for that personal transformation.
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A Story Of Personal Transformation With Rick Harrigan
On this show, we are not trying to tell you exactly what your dream, your definition of success should be or specific actions you should take. A lot of it is all about mindset. However, one key component to a lot of different stories about people reaching whatever their definition of success is a story of personal transformation. That being said, I would like to introduce you to our guest, Rick Harrigan, who has his personal transformation story, not only about his transformation but about how he’s helping others with their journeys. Welcome, Rick.
Thanks, Stephen. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
How are you doing?
I am doing great.
Let’s start by talking about your own story of personal transformation. Where were you before you underwent your transformation?
“Purpose is not something that takes place outside of ourselves. Purpose is about a sense of being and living into your sense of being.”
A large part of it starts even in my youth, the messaging that I received about expectations, success and what they meant. That’s to say that I came from a blue-collar background, where the idea of success was very much around this white-collar success was pegged to wealth, the white picket fence and a lot of material things. Money was always a source of frustration and a lot of gnashing of teeth when I grew up. That became somewhat ingrained.
I went on to college, stumbled into media and became a Corporate Executive in the entertainment realm in Los Angeles for twenty years when all was said and done, over that period, it started well. As my career progressed, I started making more and more money, got the family, the kid and the mortgage. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do, what I should be doing. There was this little voice whose volume increased and increased that was saying, “This is not what you are supposed to be doing. This is not right for you.”
By the time I hit my ’30s, I was by and largely miserable. It was the classic story of, successful on the outside, miserable on the inside. I ended up feeling constrained by the golden handcuffs where I was making a lot of money, had a lot of bills, expenses, expensive cars and things like that. I felt like I couldn’t get out. I felt stuck by the circumstances that I felt I was supposed to create in my life. It was a dead-end street. I ended up completely feeling burnt out, frustrated, stuck, disconnected, kept this sunny, cheery disposition on the outside. On the inside, I realized that what I was doing was not touching any deeper sense of self or contributing to the world or society. I felt like a mercenary who was strictly making money for a corporation.
Finally, when I reached the point where I was probably days away from a nervous breakdown, this was Los Angeles, there were a lot of long commutes, I had an epiphany. I read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle for the third time. I don’t know why. I felt compelled to read it yet one more time. It landed with me because I realized the answers to my frustrations and feeling stuck did not lie outside. They were all inside. It was a bit of a spiritual epiphany. It was enough of an opening where I could empower myself to seek some guidance to say, “Enough is enough,” and to look inward to find the answers that I needed. What I did was I found my own coach/guru/psychologist and started answering big questions that I had never answered because I fell into life.
A couple of questions about that whole experience. First of all, as you were pursuing this corporate executive and Hollywood role, was there any part of you that felt like something might be missing at the time? Were you riding on that high from exactly doing what all my blue-collar family, friends back home, always dreamed of, “I should go with it?”
Living purposefully is the ultimate job in life. It’s the end of job security.
That was the case a little more so in the beginning and also financially feeling compelled. When I rolled into Los Angeles, I was driving a 1985 Plymouth Horizon. I had one plastic bag full of CDs, another of clothes and about $80 in my pocket. To answer your question more directly, yes. That sense was always there. There was always this sense of, “This is okay for now. I will get to the meaningful stuff.” Every year, that wasn’t happening. I was in what many people refer to as drift. I was drifting along. Externally, it wasn’t very painful but internally, that pain continued to amplify year after year until it became unbearable.
One question I have about this period of drift is that anyone who goes through it has some distraction mechanism, whether it be drugs, alcohol, overuse of technology or sleeping around. Did you have a thing that was distracting you from that?
It was booze. Part of my job was taking clients out on the expense account to fancy dinners, events, movie premieres, tv show premieres and all of that revolved around having drinks 3, 4 days a week, I was out. The expectation was to lubricate both myself because I’m naturally an introvert and then lubricate my clients. As that inner voice, sense of disconnect and lack of fulfillment amplified, it became a problem. I was drinking too much. That was a big part of my transformation, recognizing nothing is going to change until I create clarity and stop drinking.
Would you say to anyone that is engaged in some activity, regardless of what it is? I recorded previous episodes that discuss the idea of not even being necessarily a specific item, like alcohol or drugs but the idea of being perpetually busy. For example, do you feel like people engaged in these things are simply buying time until something, some internal mechanism eventually brings you to the point where you have to have a reckoning?
More or less, you are lucky if you do have a reckoning that you survive and come out the other side. Many people never have that reckoning or that reckoning is such that their lives are destroyed, in some way, shape or form.
As you go about your journey, what made you decide, “I’m going to go seek out a coach?” What made you make that specific decision?
It was equal parts misery, reaching the boiling point where I could no longer take it. At that same time, whether it be serendipitous or simply because I was seeking it, I did have that glimpse of a spiritual epiphany as well in terms of connecting with something a little bigger than myself, a deepening of presence. That was what created that opening rather than glossing over this misery via alcohol or busyness, I’ve got present, took a breath and gave myself the opening to look inside. That’s when I realized I don’t have these answers. I was never equipped with the tools to find these answers. I need help. That was the greatest decision I ever made in my life, seeking help, recognizing the pattern year after year, the golden handcuffs and work with a coach.
Tell me about your work with a coach. From what you told me before, it sounds like it’s a little bit different than your standard career coaching service.
This individual was straddling the line between a coach, spiritual guru and licensed psychologist with his PhD. We did a lot of deep psychological work dealing with some childhood stuff but running it all through the filter of who you are and who do you want to be moving forward. We started answering big questions about life that I had never answered. I had a good sense of who I was. There was a reason why I felt so miserable. It’s because I wasn’t aligned with who I truly was. It takes a bit of an objective lens to pop the hood, look under there and see what’s going on. What are your values? What are your beliefs? What are your strengths, morals and purpose?
How long did it take you to find that spot?
We are always the totality of our experiences.
It took a solid six months of internal work and deprogrammed some limiting beliefs and assumptions that weren’t serving me, then reprogrammed with empowering beliefs and a positive belief system. I felt empowered to stand up and say, “These are my values. This is how I’m going to live. This is my unique definition of success, not the one that was foisted on me by my parents, society, teachers or so on.”
As you pursue this path, you pursued this six-month intense regiment of self-discovery. What did you hear from the people who had originally imparted this version of success onto you, people from your upbringing?
By this point, my father had passed away. My mother had Alzheimer’s so they weren’t in the picture in terms of being able to offer me feedback. One of the things my father always did tell me was, “Be your own boss.” There was this whole idea of being successful and make money, too. I realized that as I was living into this, finding your unique purpose, your definition of success and living according to your values is being your own boss. Purposefully living is the ultimate job in life. It’s the end of job security if you can live purposefully. Had my dad seen this, he absolutely would have been on board, my mom as well.
As for the other people in my life, one of my fears throughout my years in the corporate world was, what are they going to say? That infamous “they.” “What are people going to think? What are they going to say?” As I started making these wholesale changes in my life, quitting the job, announcing that I was moving, I had decided to become a career and life purpose coach. Everybody that mattered in my life was unanimously on board and incredibly supportive. I’m blessed to have a loving family and good friends, which all of my concerns surrounding that were utterly unfounded. There may have been some observers that thought, “That dude is crazy. How can he walk away from this income?” They weren’t a part of this process as I was going through it. They fell by the wayside naturally.
There are two fantastic mindset moments out of that portion of the story. Number one is, a lot of times when people get afraid of something, you are more afraid of something that might happen or you think is going to happen, rather than something that’s happening. Sometimes I compare that to when you are 15, 16 years old. I don’t know the first time you go and ask someone out. You are always afraid of rejection. The same thing the first time if you are starting a business, the first time you ask for, you pitch someone, you go to 1 million cops, which is like a live-action version of Shark Tank here in Denver, it’s interesting and I can’t wait until it’s in person again, we are oftentimes more afraid of something that’s either worse in our minds or probably not going to happen. That uncomfortable conversation we only have with people we care about from time to time will always have in our heads. Someone is going to blow up at us. Someone is going to yell something at you, be overly critical of you. Even those things are oftentimes not as big of a deal as we make them out to be if they do happen but usually, they don’t happen.
Every day, you can make a choice to start, stop, or change something.
Usually, that negative criticism or in a lot of cases, they don’t happen but we are sitting here, getting very flustered about it. The other important mindset moment is this idea of being your own boss. I see a lot of glorification of the idea of being your own boss. It’s a great thing. Oftentimes, we have to narrow if an idea of what it means like be your own boss is you successfully started up a company. You have open-minded or very agreeable investors that never force you to do anything different than what you want to do. You are the ultimate freelancer that sits there and gets your stuff.
There’s no one formula for success. It’s good to hear something say there’s some spirit of being your own boss even in the sense that you took some level of control of your life, even if someone goes to a spiritual journey and say, “What they end up with is a different 9:00 to 5:00 job or a different standard employment job, more aligned.” I’m sure you have plenty of stories about people who have undergone processes like this. That’s a good transition. Tell us right now about your coaching service. You have also taken some of that spirit of not your standard coaching service.
You hit the nail on the head there with that unique definition of success. The only way to be successful is to understand what your own definition of success is in life, career and relationships look like. Many of us never take a step back to crystallize what that looks like. That is a large part of my coaching. It’s an inside-out approach, whereas the end results may look like a different career, a promotion or finding your career, increased productivity or profitability. It all starts on that inner journey into things like values, that unique definition of success, beliefs and moral code, perhaps your spirituality defining that a little bit more, getting crystal clear on simply who you are and getting aligned behind that. A purpose is not something that takes place outside of ourselves. A purpose is about a sense of being and living into your sense of being. Maya Angelou put it the best in her brilliance. She said, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.” That is the core, the unshakable definition of purpose is liking yourself, what you do and how you do it in every moment of your life. When you get clear on that, you are bulletproof.
Do you often encounter people who come in when they are first beginning their journey, come to you for coaching that are in the exact opposite state where they hate themselves, what they do and how they do it? Is that a common state of being?
Unfortunately, yes. I know I shouldn’t be laughing. I can laugh because I was there. I always say in my self, deprecating moments, “If I could do it, anybody could do it.” I was in a bad place, my friend. What I hear more often than anything is, “I have no idea what I want to do. All I know is I can’t do this anymore.” Exactly that’s where I was. I hear that all across the spectrum, ages, economic status, whether it’s a twenty-something who’s getting started or a 40-something who was in a position like myself where they are feeling stuck and unfulfilled. There’s a lack of clarity there that a lot of people find themselves in many ways. We have never been encouraged to define those things about ourselves like values, purpose, what my unique definition of success is. That’s what I love to do in my coaching.
One of the ideas I have behind this show is that adopting the right mindset. It’s something that knows no generation. I have some other episodes where I discuss how different generations respond to different things but it knows no generation, gender, nationality. It’s a common theme to a lot of people in our lives. A lot of us end up at that point where we say, “I do know what it’s like to be in that spot where I don’t know what I want to do but I know I can’t keep doing this.” It sounds like your situation inspired you to almost pay it forward. You are helping people that are in a spot where you used to be. How does that contribute to your ability to help your clients now?
That is what I exactly decided to do, which was pay it forward. Having walked through those fires and experienced them firsthand gives me a point of relatability with them, the ability to empathize and create a deeper understanding. Having felt that way, gone through the process of self-discovery, the path to purpose and have found an external expression of that purpose. I have walked through those fires of self-transformation, which gives me a unique empathy and perspective on how people feel to do it themselves.
You feel the way that the person who comes into your coaching service and exactly says how you put it, “I don’t know what I want. I can’t do this anymore.” You exactly feel it. There’s no even a possible way that you can judge them even if you wanted to. You say, “I have been through that as well.”
I believe that we are always the totality of our experiences. I will always be that Rick Harrigan, that 39 years old and utterly feeling lost. That is part of who I am. I can relate, empathize and have no judgment about anything about anybody who may feel that way.
Another great point for the readers out there is oftentimes, this pressure to have certain things figured out by a certain age, we, as a culture, tend to be quite forgiving of the 23, 24, 25-year-old that still doesn’t have their shit together. There’s a time, 30, 35, when society feels a little bit, in general, less forgiving of people that haven’t figured it out yet in some cases. I remember hearing someone say, “Some of the most interesting people I know are already in their 50s and still don’t believe they have it all figured out.” For anyone who’s reading right now who feels like they should have gotten to further a long point and self-discovery by the age that they are at, a little bit of self-forgiveness would go a long way. The other thing I’m wondering is, did start your coaching service give a little bit of closure to the experiences that you have had before? All of a sudden, this has led me to something.
One of the things about finding flow and purpose in life is that time becomes less important.
That dovetails with your point of it’s never too late. Be gentle with yourself no matter where you are on that path because, on the one hand, sure. Do I wish that I had found these answers in my early 20s? Absolutely. On another hand, I had never been where I was, unable to help the people that I help had I not experienced it firsthand. I have come to cherish and value all of those experiences as making me who I am. A crucial part of purposefully living is loving yourself, loving every aspect of your experience and valuing every aspect of your experience. That empowers you to create the story you want to create from that experience. I’m no longer a victim of any of those things that occurred. They are the fuel that is propelling me forward to help even more people.
One of the most important things in my self-transformation journey was to no longer be a victim. That’s something I would advocate for anyone. I have a sinister reason for adopting that mentality, which is me looking at people who are victims and saying, “I would not want to trade lies with them,” and me looking at people that were not victims and saying, “These people seem cool.”
As they say, “Every day, you can choose to start, stop or change something.” A large part of the coaching process is getting people at the cause of their lives rather than at the effect of their lives. Before I went through my transformation, I was at the effect of my life. I had a bit of a, “It’s me,” approach. My childhood was bad so I can excuse all of this. These things are happening. I’m going with the flow. I was drifting, accepting and tolerating more so than anything. That was the changing point for me, reaching that point like we discussed where enough is enough. I have to get at the cause of my life and start writing the story that I want to write rather than having this story written for me.
That is an exercise in a little bit of taking control a bit over your life, which is weird because I feel like people focused on the effects tend to try to control others. While people focus on the cause tend to say, “I can control myself,” and oddly enough, end up with more control for having done that transformation. Before we wrap up, there are a couple of things I wanted to cover. First of all, for any readers who want to get a hold of you, find out more about your coaching services, please tell us the web address or where we can go about finding you.
It’s easy peasy, RickHarrigan.com.
As always, it will be on my website. The final thing I want to cover is, what would you say to someone who is struggling but hearing about this six-month-long journey and all the introspection sounds intimidating to them?
First off, I would say my process doesn’t take six months. It’s more of a 3 to 4-month process. Over the years that I have honed a lot of what I learned in my process and created more efficient processes also, I was digging out of a lot of deeper psychological wounds that in my coaching practice, I don’t cover. Most of my clients that do come to me aren’t digging out of such deep wounds. It is about a 3 to 4-month process. Think of 3 to 4 months in the scope of your life. Think about it in terms of the exciting, amazing journey into self that you get to take the time. One of the things about finding flow and purpose in life is that time becomes less important. Even the process itself is fun and exciting. It creates all of this, these new vistas and horizons in your life that are all exciting and all positive. 3 to 4 months in the grand scheme of things is a blip on the purpose radar.
A lot of the people are thinking day-to-day, week-to-week. I feel like our corporate culture encourages that a little bit or at least thinks of everything as check-off your Q1 goals as opposed to thinking about it in a broader lifetime span. One final question, for anyone reading now, what’s the number one thing someone can do tomorrow morning to get into a better mindset?
Invest in being present. We can paper over these things or try to lubricate this misalignment that we feel on a deeper level with things like jumping on your phone right away or into your busy day, drinking or gambling too much. If you can find a little presence, moment to be and turn your gaze inward, that can create the opening that you need. It may seem painful and daunting but I promise you it is not. What we need is that presence, that pause, where we can let these inner things that are dying to be expressed and aligned with our external lives come out.
That seems pertinent in the state of our culture, where if you want to be, you can be perpetually distracted. If you were in the eighteenth century, writing things with one of those quill pens or whatever Thomas Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence. Oftentimes, there are hours a day where there’s nothing to do but watch the fire keep you warm in the evening hours. Whereas now, you can easily throw a phone in front of your face, you can grab an infinite number of books, magazines. Always takes a conscious effort to take time to let your brain process the information that is coming to you as opposed to constantly consuming, absorbing more.
We need that space. I will add bonus points if you can get into nature.
That’s one of the things that we in Colorado are a little bit lucky at. For someone in Manhattan, it will take a little while longer to get to Central Park. It’s going to be 50,000 other people there. Even our approach to nature can be very doing-oriented. I have to go for a hike, mountain climb ski or I have to get there and do something. If you can get there, sit and be, nature offers an even greater, deeper, vaster, more amazing container for us to create that space. Get into some nature and be for a while.
That’s amazing thoughts to wrap up everything on because I feel like my generation in Colorado is guilty of making nature into another thing to do, especially with these ski apps that measure your vertical feet and then compete with each other. I’ve got 35,000. It is fantastic to know about your journey. Thank you very much for joining us.
I want to thank you, Stephen, for having me on. It has been an absolute pleasure. I enjoyed chatting with you.
Thank you very much. Stay tuned for more episodes where I will feature more interesting stories from people like Rick who have undergone some transformation and have built something that’s helping make our world a better place. Hopefully, you will all be inspired.
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About Rick Harrigan
Rick Harrigan is a former Hollywood executive who went through a personal transformation to find himself in alignment, in Colorado as a Life Coach.