Meet Aaron Donaghy

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aaron Donaghy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aaron, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

Van Hoosen Junior High, 1984. I leave Mrs. Forbush’s english class and am walking down the hallway. It’s the 80’s I’m stylish with way too tight parachute pants and a sleeveless white sweater with a red japanese symbol across the front of it. These used to be my brothers clothes, and he is the coolest so I am feeling the coolest. Behind me I hear a group a girl say “Hey Aaron, nice pants!” I turn to see my admirer and there was a group of cheerleaders behind me giggling. I turned around and kept walking. This is the day I learned to become invisible.

I would spend the next decade of my life unseen. My clothing would be average. My effort would be avearge. My life would be average…because nobody cares about or sees average. I walked through life like a mist, but wanting desperately someone to see me.

I hated school, so why would I choose to become a high school teacher? Weird fact if you have the power of invincibility, you also have the superpower to see others who are invisible. When I was teaching I could see them. The kids disappearing into the middle of the classroom. The kids wearing the jeans and grey sweatshirts. The kids who didn’t raise their hands, but also never disrupted. The kids, like me, hiding, but hoping someone could see them. And I did. I saw the hidden passion. The desire hidden behind despair to be called on, to be called out, and to be challenged. As I saw them they began to shine. Their potential no longer hidden but unleashed. My purpose became to see and show them all their potential purpose.

Amazingly, as I championed the invisible I began to see something unexpected. All the students were invisible. The rebels, the popular, the athletes, the nerds…and, yes, even the cheerleaders. I could see that our world was forcing us all to hide our value, either by tucking it away or pretending we had value by playing the great game of high school. But that is all it was a game of pretend. My life’s mission became a drive to give everyone who wanted a chance to be seen and heard, an opportunity to see that potential within themselves. It is up to all of us to own our story, but we others to help us find that path.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I moved to Texas at the very end of 2019. I left Michigan and teaching. A former student was starting an addiction rehab center in Houston and they asked me to join there staff. The two owners had a vision to transform addiction recovery and thought my experience in teaching, coaching, and leadership could help start and grow their recovery center. I am not an addict and new nothing about recovery, but I joined up.

The leadership work I had been working on for years was centered around see and unleashing others potential through story. For the past 4 1/2 years I have been applying this process to help those in addiction recovery to transform their lives away from the pain of the past towards the purpose and potential of their future. Because there was not adequate leadership curriculum for students or addicts I developed my own. I called it Story of Self.

As a biologist I was trained to see the world objectively. The problem with my scientific mindset is it helped me see how thing worked, but it did not help see how to change things. I researched and read, but I could not find any resource that would help me guide my students towards transformation. Then I saw it. We can not change our lives if we can not change our stories. So I went to work trying to learn everything I could about the psychology, philosophy, neruobiology of our brains and why we structure the world through narrative. This journey led me to develop a curriculum and framework for people to understand, reframe, rewrite, and create a new Story of Self.

Recovery is an impossible process. Most addicts will not even choose the path of recovery. Those courageous few that do choose this path will face the greatest challenges of their life trying to create a new life without the dependency on the drug they have used to cope with their life. Story of Self has proven to be a powerful tool in helping addicts see and begin a life of value, meaning, and purpose.

Today, I have partnered with one of our former addicts to help others in recovery to change their stories. Recovery is a lifetime process, we believe Story of Self will help them transform their lives. We believe Story of Self will continue to be a powerful tool to help both addicts and those counseling them to provide a path beyond recovery. We believe recovery is not the end of a difficult road, but the beginning of a new and amazing adventure.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The journey of growth and transfomation requires one to leave the comfort of their known world and enter the discomfort of their unknown world. Unfortunately, this is the only path. Our potential to change is only found in the depths of the unknown. The three requirements to see and unleash the potential are:

1. Explore. Choose courage. To find the truth of who you are and what you are capable of you must have the courage to enter the unknown. It is only in new experiences, in the places we fear to venture, can we discover what we are looking for.

2. Play. Meaningful connection. Life is challenging, but it is in these challenges we find the meaning of our lives. Suffering is inescapable, but growth is optional. It is up to each of us to stop only being victims and become the heroes of our own story.

3. Create. Love is Purpose. Though this journey of discovery and growth we continue to see and become more than we were before. See, living, and growing through our own stories puts the capacity to change our lives and our worlds in our own hands.

As Bucky Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that maks the existing model obsolete.”

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

We have a vision to change the story of 1 million people struggling with addiction. To do this we want to work with the counselors, therapists, recovery leaders who are looking for ways to transform peoples lives.

Unfortunately, there are some people involved in the recovery field who benefit from relapses. Also, many who work in the addiction field have grown disheartened because of the nature of recovery. Addiction recovery is a life and death business and you are working with people in their most desperate and even deadly moment of life. The pain and destruction that surrounds addiction is as challenging to fix as the addiction itself.

Our hope and belief is that Story of Self can not only as a tool to help the client, but Story can reinvigorate those courageous and innovative individuals who are in the trenches fighting for recovery.

Too often we only have our past to provide our solutions in the present. Story of Self is a new curriculum aimed at the future and change that can occur within. We see Story of Self building on the past, not replacing it, and creating a new path for clients into the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.StoryOfSelf.com (being built right now)

Image Credits

none – taken by me and my family