About Christopher Browning
I didn’t wake up one day and say, “You know I’ll be a career coach.. yes.. for MEN! I have a niche nobody has tapped and I’ll corner it before somebody else does.”
It was a long journey of pain and confusion to get to this point. I also noticed the frustration and pain I experienced is felt by most men. What I thought was only about me turned out to be universal. The more I asked for help the more men quietly confessed they were in the same boat.
I understand the struggle to balance dreams and desires with reality. Then you add this hard to explain drive to accomplish something. I’ve asked many men to help name the ‘something’, but it is elusive.
It isn’t about ego where you want to leave a legacy of your grand name. You want to leave earth knowing what you did mattered. Sometimes it only matters to you and there is a feeling of rest, knowing you could die right now and you would have lived a good life.
At other times it does matter those you love respect you and what you did for them. It gets to the core of a man’s being.
When you don’t have that ‘something’, you feel as if you are on shakey ground. The earth might crack open and swallow you down and nobody would notice. Metaphorically you end up clinging to things around you, hoping you can hang onto them until the earth closes up and your feet can touch down again.
Sometimes you notice the lack of the ‘something’ when you can’t look another man in the eyes. There is no reason why you can’t do it. Uncontionsly your eyes gaze down at the feet in front of you and you feel shameful for unknown reasons.
As they say been there done that.
OK it is not 100% true. I’ve been there, done it and I expect to return. After finding and talking to men who mastered themselves they all say it comes in cycles. The good news is once you know the path out you can always find it again.
Here is the bad news. It is an art our society is loosing. Here is the very bad news. Many men do not want to be reminded they don’t know the answers when you do look for help. You end up unknowingly poking at their own pain. Some will comment “Well that is just the way life is, suck it up.” Others will become defensive and distance themselves from you. That is where I found myself .
I thought I was to figure it out by myself. Society tells you, you should be able to. American culture is excellent at telling us (men) there must be something wrong with us if we can’t figure it out on our own. Celebrated “self-made” millionaires, maverick heroes in pop-culture and sport stars who single handedly make come back plays all portray being anything less than that is sub-par.
The difficultly is you can not do it by yourself.
If you study any other culture you will see men only become fully self-aware by relying on other (mature) men to hold up a mirror of self-reflection. Anthropologists call this a “rite of passage”. Rites of passage give us the room to fail and improve in a challenging and instructive arena. Sadly there are few true rites of passage left in American culture.
You might be thinking what the crap does rite of passage have to do with getting a job. You want to eat, and have roof over your head and pay your bills. That is all I wanted to too.
If I could have paid attention to the whispers of my young life I would have noticed I’m naturally good at what I do. But few people are born with the ability to correctly self-reflect and decipher the many messages. There is a good old book which has wisdom on why this is hard. It says, “It is the glory of God to conceal matters, and the glory of men to seek them out. Even if you don’t believe in God you can recognize the power and confidence which comes from discovering owning who you are.
The boring 3rd person about declaration
Christopher graduated from the University of Oregon with B.S. in Mathematics and a B.S. in Computer Science. After graduating, he was hired by the Japanese government to teach English in the public school system and help develop an English teaching curriculum. Upon returning to the United States, Christopher started his career as a corporate backend web developer. His projects at McAfee Antivirus and Rockwell Collins received high accolades and several patents. When given the opportunity of a life time to move to England with a pay raise, Christopher declined. Success at work did not translated into success in life. He left the corporate world and started a small website company helping small business and non-profits translate their company vision into a matching website.
In 2006, Christopher accepted an offer to be the college/career age pastor at his church. In this position Christopher noticed the generational difference work-related stress had on men’s identity. In particular Gen X and younger differ from Baby Boomers in the type of frustration they experience towards work and how to successfully over come it.
Seeing the growing frustration in men and lack of sound answers, Christopher now coaches Generation X and Y men through the mixed messages society gives them about work and how it directly affects their whole self-esteem.
Christopher also holds an MBA in marketing and has a life long dream to ride his bicycle around the world while visiting all 7 continents.
