I’ve been on both sides of the decision.
My Story
I was nineteen when my mother died.
I’d finished one semester at the University of Cincinnati and I had no idea what came next. So I took out a piece of paper and wrote three words across the top. College. Job. Military. Then I listed the pros and cons under each one.
The military won. I’d have somewhere to live, a trade to learn, food, and a paycheck.
It was a good decision at the wrong time.
Because what I’d really done was find something to do instead of grieving. And grief doesn’t take a substitute. It waited until I was in the Navy, a long way from home, surrounded by people who never knew her. Then it came for me anyway.
That’s the first thing I ever learned about transition, and I learned it the hard way. You can make the right move and still get it wrong, if you haven’t dealt with what you’re leaving behind.
Since Then
I’ve done a lot of things I had no business doing.
Eleven years in a machine shop. Branch manager of a bank in a neighborhood nobody wanted to be assigned to. Software sales at a company where I didn’t understand the software. Six years of semi-pro football, and a Hall of Fame induction in 2019 for what I did on that field. Nearly thirty years working alongside professional athletes and entertainers. A licensed and ordained minister. Two youth groups started from nothing, one in Cincinnati and one here in Atlanta.Somebody told me I wasn’t qualified for most of that. The door opened anyway.
What’s on paper is nice. What comes out of your mouth and how you carry yourself will get you further than a résumé ever will.
What All Of It Taught Me
I’ve watched people sit for years on a decision they’d already made.
Not because they were confused. Not because they needed one more book or one more conversation. They knew. They’d known for a long time.
People don’t stay stuck because they don’t know what to do. They stay stuck because they’re grieving something they haven’t lost yet.
Nobody ever tells you that’s what it is. So you stand there wondering what’s wrong with you.
Nothing is wrong with you. I know, because at nineteen I tried to outrun it, and it found me anyway.
How I Work
I’m not going to tell you what to do.
Everyone in your life has already done that.
I’m going to help you see your situation from somewhere other than the middle of it. Then I’m going to ask you the questions nobody has asked you, including the ones you’ve been avoiding. Then we find the one step you can take this week, and I hold you to it.
I validate where you are. Not so you stay there. So you know I understand it before I ask you to move. And I’m simple about it. Things are what they are. Let’s not dress them up as something else. Let’s call it what it is and move on.
My Background
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Over thirty years of speaking and leadership training
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Hall of Fame athlete, inducted 2019 after six years of semi-pro football
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Nearly thirty years working with professional athletes and entertainers
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United States Navy veteran
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Licensed and ordained minister
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Eric Thomas certified speaker
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Certified Christian Coach
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Training in loss and grief counseling
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Toastmasters award winner, and third in the Georgia state finals out of more than 6,200 members
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Based in Atlanta
If you’re standing at a door you already know you have to walk through, you don’t have to do it by yourself.
I got you. I’ve been there.
Contact Brent K. Miller
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