When you want to feel your richness too, let’s have a conversation while we walk.

If you’re struggling but don’t feel ready to act. Start with the first step, talk to someone you trust. I wish you good luck on your journey.

So, if you wake up one morning and don’t recognise yourself in the mirror or if you feel lost after a transition from a significant career or relationship, I can relate and I can help. 

Looking back, my younger self would be worried about how I present myself now, it would feel risky to talk about love and prioritising feelings over earning respect. It took a transformation to prioritise values that were true to me rather than focused on what I thought others might want to see in me. 

So, if this all sounds a bit hippie woo woo, and you simply want to optimise for high performance on your current path, I get it. Our work will lead to optimisation, but the path you’re treading is likely to change. Paring back living by the rules of others will do nothing to dampen your fire to achieve what is truly important to you. The opposite effect is true. It will remove distractions and false starts and allow you to optimise your life and environment to focus on the big goals. If this feels uncomfortable it might be the sign that here lies your true path. 

Whether I wanted to be seen to be an Ironman or an SF Officer, each one inevitably led to another goal because the value was something I had no control over, how others perceived me.

For you it doesn’t have to mean earning less or even spending less, it’s about re-finding joy in your relationships, feeling like jumping out of bed in the morning to do work you love, it’s about feeling healthy and at peace and catching yourself smiling to yourself saying I love my life. 

I’ve tried many ways to optimise my body and mind and lived experience. Training as a Paratrooper and diver and attempting UK Special Forces Selection while in the Army; meditation retreats and consistent practice, challenging experiences like Ironman Triathlon, expeditions to remote places - both solo and as part of a team, plant medicine ceremonies in the South American jungle. At the time, some of these were aimed at increasing my perceived status. 

What’s funny is, while I’m making less income than a past life, I’ve never felt richer. That is what alignment feels like. 

They are messier and way more hippie than the values and standards of the British Army and others I had absentmindedly collected along my path. What happened? Everything became simpler. As I stopped living the values of others and doubled down on what is most important to me. I found decision making became effortless. These values now guide how I choose to work, where I choose to live and how I spend my time. 

I spend time with those I love. I travel in a campervan and live with my partner in an off-grid cabin, where we can drink water from our spring and eat whole foods. I get to immerse in the cold river, meditate and workout in nature every day and to cook every meal over a fire. I continually choose the path that offers learning and growth, it seldom feels easy, but it does feel meaningful. Rise Primal coaching is the result. My mission is to help others so I’m building a retreat centre in my woodland to enable immersive coaching in person and longer retreats for clients and veterans. All of this is done with minimal impact to the surrounding environment. This exact life isn’t for everyone, but the feeling of alignment is, and that’s the point. It’s the life of my dreams and it enables me to thrive.

Meaningful connections 
Health
Learning and growth
Helping others to learn and grow
Nature and our environment. 

It took stepping out of my own self-limiting beliefs and asking for help. I started by talking to a friend. This led to working with a coach and this led to a transformation to where I am today. The freedom I was focused on was really about escaping who I felt I had become. So I went deep.

By shedding previous ideas about what felt import to me, I found these values:

The moment I admitted I couldn’t think my way out of this hole was the moment everything shifted

I was badly injured when I left the Army. I spent time rehabilitating after surgery and studied for an MBA. But despite all this busyness, the loss of identity and physical ability (exercise had always been my coping mechanism), I felt even worse. It is only on looking back I realise I had fallen into a deep hole. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t making good decisions. I felt distracted - I could waste hours on my phone. My dream on leaving the Army was to become an entrepreneur. My darkest hour was the realisation the motivation I once had, to build something of my own was eroding. I still longed for travel and adventure, but not to broaden my horizons, only to escape how I felt. Hopelessness. I realised I didn’t have it all figured out.

I’ve always sought a life of adventure. As a teenager, there were expeditions in the Himalayas before I trained to be an Army Officer. Over the next twenty odd years I had the opportunity to operate with the best of the UK and US Armed Forces in the Balkans, Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. 


I got particularly good at parachuting into a new headquarters, rapidly understanding the culture and how I could add value. I was a chameleon; I could adapt to anything, but it came at a cost. One day I realised I’d lost myself completely. Therefore, I know what it feels like to be highly successful on paper but disconnected from your own compass.
 

Hey, I’m Dave.
I help professional men discover their true values and build self-trust to create a life they don’t want to escape from