My Story

Dual-culture kid

I grew up in a dual culture family, with a US American father and a Swedish mother. From early on I was always aware of there being (at least) two sides to everything. Two languages, two customs, two traditions. This proved to be a handy asset in a childhood with continuous movement, moving from the USA to England and then Sweden by the age of 12. Fitting in is easy when you can have curiosity and interest about new people and cultures, rather than judgement, envy or shame.

I have been lucky to be biased against seeing things as wrong or right: to me, there is only difference. There is always a reason why someone or something is the way it is, you just need to be open and curious enough to see it.

Entrepreneurial and business track

While seeing the other side of the coin came naturally, seeing my side of the coin was perhaps less so. Fitting in easily came at a cost of not giving myself a proper place. Looking back, many of the choices I made in childhood and into early adulthood were made in order to please, fit in, and ultimately to be a good boy. In early adulthood this meant pursuing a narrow definition of achievement based on grades, salary, and status. After a Bachelors in International Business and then Masters Degree in International Marketing and Management at Copenhagen Business School, three approved-of career paths were presented to us graduates: management consulting, investment banking, or corporate trainee. I chose the first.

Corporate burnout

Working as a consultant was in many ways exhilarating. Being thrust in front of corporate clients fresh out of school was nerve-wracking yet exciting. My employer was a human-centric organisation with flat hierarchies and a friendly culture compared to other companies in the same industry. I climbed the organizational ladder in rapid fashion, taking on increasing amounts of responsibility and receiving praise every step of the way. Things looked pretty good.

Only that they didn’t, in other ways. An apparent can-do attitude was actually a fear of saying no. My eager ambition started clashing with a lack of boundaries, self-care and integrity. Even though I was delivering on all metrics, I wasn’t sure the work I was doing actually helped to change anything. Slowly but surely I found myself feeling drained and lonely. Evenings and weekends would be spent at the gym or at work, partially because to deal with the workload I had taken on, but also because I felt alienated in the rest of my life and had no where else togo. Friendships faded away and didn’t seem to give me they once had. I didn’t know what else to do than work.

Well, there actually was one thing I did know what to do. I had always been an avid reader as a child. As a young adult, my interests shifted toward non-fiction topics like marketing and pop-psychology. Now, as a twenty-five year old, I found myself being irrepressibly drawn toward ancient philosophy and depth psychology. Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, psychologists like Carl Rogers and Irvin Yalom, and integrative thinkers like Josh Waitzkin and Ken Wilber fast became go-to sources of solace and wisdom. I became a human development fanatic, ripping through more than 100 books a year, on top of an already overburden workload. But the books sustained me. There were the only thing that gave me a sense of a deeper meaning and purpose in my life.

I did my best to integrate what I was learning on the side into my day-to-day work. I tried to create new services focused on human flourishing and to find mentees that I could help guide and coach. But it was an uphill struggle in an environment of KPIs. Resentment started creeping in.

At some point my body stated expressing what I dared not admit to myself. Sleepless nights, constant headaches, and back pain started becoming a constant feature of my life. I told myself: this is just temporary, I’ll get over it. I am a walking embodiment of the self-improvement paradigm: I was convinced that if I just worked out more, meditated more, and wrote in my journal more, that I would get over it.

But I couldn’t. Eventually a dear colleague saw what was happening, and I finally confronted the honest truth of what was happening. I was burning myself out.

Taking time to look inside

My employer was gracious enough to offer me amazing terms. I could take as much time away as I needed to. There would be a place for me whenever I decided to come back.

It was hard to step away at first. I tried to return after a couple of weeks, but the symptoms wouldn’t subside. So I relented and took a good six months off. I read, went on a Vipassana meditation retreat, a Reading Weekend and began therapy for the first time in my life. Very slowly I started looking at some of the deeper patterns I was living within, that revolved around being dependable, strong, liked, successful, basically anything that would tell me I was a good boy.

I went back to work after six months, making sure to change departments (to human-focused leadership development) and office locations in the meantime. I knew that something had to change, so I changed everything I could on the outside. But within weeks the old body sensations and feelings resurfaced. Something clearly wasn’t right.

One night in late December 2017, I found myself engaging with two pieces of content that would come to change my life. One of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, the other was a talk by coach Steve Hardison. Words like “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” and “When one is committed, the world finds its way to the commitment. It’s like a black hole. Everything you need finds its way to your commitment. It is heavier than gravity. Try it” spoke to something deep inside me. Not only did I know that something needed to change, but only moments earlier I realized what needed to change. I had been flipping through a journal that I’d written more than 18 months prior. One of the entries stated that: “I want to work more intimately with people – I want to work as a coach.” When I read those words in the context of the new inspiration on commitment, I just knew what I had to do. I decided to resign from current employer and become a coach. I handed in my resignation the first day back at the office in January 2018. Immediately my physical symptoms disappeared, never to return, and I had access to abundant and regenerative energy.

The coaching journey begins – as does the inner adventure

I entered into coaching with gusto, getting my coaching certification as quickly as I possibly could. Within weeks of leaving my former job I had set up a new company, launched a website, and told the world I was now a leadership coach. It took a while to get going, but within six months I had a stable set of clients and within a 18 months I was living comfortably in my new reality as solo entrepreneur. I loved every moment. Working with leaders on what matters most to them, and being able to practice on a daily basis what I was drawn towards with my mind and heart, was immensely satisfying and rewarding.

With time I naturally deepened my practice into new and deeper domains. I trained in modalities like NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model), Family Constellations, PsychoNeuroEnergetics and Warm Data to be able to help shift deeper patterns in the people I worked with. Here Carl Buchheit at NLP Marin was particularly important in exposing me to the magic of reality and a consciousness-first worldview, for which I will always be grateful.

I also began with intensity exploring the depths of my own consciousness as well as the nature of existence. This brought me through the years to study with Thomas Hübl, Patrick Connor, and Leslie Temple-Thurston, who I consider to me to be my main teachers and influences on my spiritual and metaphysical thought. Other important intellectual influences have been Martin Buber (whose ideas I wrote a book about in 2023), Iain McGilchrist, Zak Stein, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Nora Bateson, Paul Kingsnorth, David Whyte, and more.

In 2020 a new chapter began with several life transitions. The most important was finding my life partner Jana at a Thomas Hübl retreat in Israel. Later that year I moved to Berlin to live with her. That same year I co-founded Yellow, an online and offline space for emergent and unscripted learning journeys, with my friend Rob Poynton. Over the years Yellow has seen more than 100 people pass through the six-month program and evolve into a vibrant and supportive community. I began facilitating and hosting certified coaching training programs at Coaches Rising.

By this point my work as a coach has transformed into something wider and more all-encompassing. Helping people to evolve and transform both individually but also in collective sensemaking spaces became increasingly vital as a sources of fulfillment and inspiration.

Searching for a home in the Swedish countryside

Shortly after our son was born in 2022, Jana and I felt the intuitive call of the future. We saw in front of a us a place where we could live more immersed in nature, grow some of our own food, and have a venue where we could host people and groups for transformational experiences. We didn’t just want to live “on” the planet – we wanted to live “in” it, as a part of it, and for our lives to be dedicated to serving the evolution of humanity.

For the entire year of 2024 we travelled across Sweden, looking for suitable properties, working on farms to learn the trade, all while I was continuing to work remotely has a coach. It was an exhilarating adventure and a demanding one, honoring the search while tending to the practicalities of a two-year old son and a family without a solid physical home base.

Towards the end of the year, our patience began wearing thin. We began entertaining the possibility of postponing the vision and settling for a less ambitious option for the time being. But, as is often the case, just when we were about to give up, life showed us a final place. This one was the right one.

In December 2024 we moved in to Allsta Gård, a small farm and retreat center in the Västernorrland region of northern Sweden. Set in a quiet valley, the farm allows us to grow organic vegetables, raise pastured laying hens, and host retreats and offsites for people and organisations from around the world. Our mission for Allsta Gård is to become a hub for human development in the Norrland region, and in so doing helping to bring forth a more connected, alive, and beautiful world.

Today

The work of my life, as I believe it is for every human being alive, is to move from ego to soul. For me that looks like being devoted to inner work and spiritual practice, but also engaging in my local community, tending to the earth and soil, and trying to be the best father and partner I can be.

My professional work is split between coaching leaders, facilitating constellations, writing white books and papers on human development, and hosting retreats and offsites for individuals and organizations. The common thread is a devotional impetus to help make our planet and society more infused with heart and soul – and particularly the realms of business and leadership, where there is so much of that work to do with such consequential implications.

In times of metacrisis, humanity is being asked profound questions about the nature of reality, consciousness, value, and life itself. As a species tasked with stewarding the planet and all of its life and lifeforms, it is clear that we are falling short on all important metrics. For the sake of the lives of people and animals living today, future generations of life, and for the inherent sacredness of life itself, we must transform our cumulative capacities for consciousness and compassion to have a chance of stewarding each other through the tumultuous times that are to come. Each time we dare to take the plunge into our interiors to heal ourselves, support each other’s evolution, and contribute to building vibrant and resilient on-the-ground communities, we are making small yet necessary steps toward a better and more beautiful world.

This is what I live for. If you feel similarly called, feel free to reach out and connect.