← Becoming UnDone
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You ever have a moment where everything you've built just falls apart? I did. Years ago. I hit a wall so hard I almost didn't get back up. And oddly enough, it all started because I'd won. I had worked for years to earn a degree. As a matter of fact, by the age of 29, I'd earned four of them. As a first generation college kid, I really didn't have any idea what I was doing. I was just learning and failing and learning again as I went. After bouncing back and forth between caring for patients as an athletic trainer and teaching students how to do it as their professor in college classrooms, I finally was promoted and tenured. For me, it was a milestone achievement. Less than 5% of the world's population earn doctorates, and less than 5% of them get tenure track jobs. And less than 5% of them get promoted and tenured. It was kind of a big deal. I'd spent decades of my life to achieve this goal. When I got it, I opened the letter that had been signed by my university president and I read that I had in fact been promoted and tenured. I enjoyed it for all of about 10 seconds. Before I could even allow myself a smile, I sensed the sound of my own voice echoing off the cold walls of my mind. Now what? I was numb for days. But that one achievement sent me into a months long existential crisis. I was burned out, disillusioned, stripped of purpose, grasping for identity. For a while, I believed the lie that I was done. Reason I'm telling you this is that through the process, I learned the science of the comeback. Not just through research, but through living it. See, the comeback isn't magic, it's method. There's a science to rebuilding when your world goes silent. And if you learn from it, you don't just recover. You rebuild with purpose. Let me break it down. I call it the three R's of every real. Reflect. Realign. Rebuild. Reflect on what was lost. Not just the job or the title, but the identity behind it. For me, it wasn't just getting a new position. It was letting go of who I thought I had to be to matter. And that's not weakness. I didn't understand it at the time. That's grief. And naming. It is the first step to healing. After you reflect, you realign. Then you revisit the values that got buried under your performance. Stop chasing applause and start asking better questions. Who am I becoming? What actually matters now? This is where the spark comes back. Not from hustle, but from clarity. And finally, you rebuild brick by brick. Not trying to recreate the old version of you, but putting together a better one. One that's built for longevity, for legacy. For this season of your life. I tell my clients, my students all the time, you are not broken. You're just becoming undone. And that unraveling, friend, it is not the end. It is the beginning of something better. Your comeback isn't a matter of luck or timing. It's a matter of strategy, surrender, and showing up one disciplined step at a time. Because the truth is, your best chapter doesn't live in who you want were. It lives in what you choose to become next. Because when you become undone, you realize the hope and the inspiration and the power that lives in the fact that you aren't done yet. Sam.