Let me tell you a quick story, more of which you’ll hear in the upcoming book. For the past 17 years, I led a revolution around thinking differently. I advocated with real passion in many corners of the globe for visual literacy, for game facilitation, for better thinking by design. I stumbled upon these tools as an adult and when I recognized the scope of their potential it almost gave me whiplash.

During those years, I used these tools with countless others and, of course, I used them for myself. They delivered on their promise. Under their tutelage I became a more agile entrepreneur, a more connective presenter, a more present teacher and facilitator, a more capable coach. As you can imagine, I love visual thinking and game facilitation because of their potency. With their instinct to accommodate anything in order to learn, they are teachers through and through.

They make the learning process come to life. But little did I know just how much these tools could teach. I knew they were solving problems in big companies, challenging habitual behavior, and encouraging innovation. I also knew they were empowering students around the world, offering valuable, meaningful ways to inquire and to think. What I did not recognize about these methods was their deeper metamorphic power. These tools, in my life, became another kind of catalyst entirely, one that set in motion a personal Rubicon, a searing and hallowed voyage into the workings of the mind and the unfinished business of the heart.

In retrospect, I would just like to say…duh. Of course cracking open new learning styles eventually cracked open my internal landscape. Of course these tools weren’t only about cognition and the intellect. They were emotional and spiritual teachers, as well, facilitative tools for self design. And I think you know by now that I don’t mean surface self design. I mean deep self design. I mean deep space nine self design. Aided by these tools, I slowly rappelled into my sacred but wounded consciousness and then reverse-engineered my way back, more stabilized, integrated, and repaired, and with so much to share.

Deep Self Design is the next wave in the revolution I started moons ago. Instead of a new way of thinking, I offer a new way of being—with ourselves, with others, and ultimately, with the world.