About Me
Douglas Turet, CLC, CTC, ICF
How can a life that begins with confusion, exclusion, desperation and limitation evolve into more than that?
Simple: By RE-Defining What's Possible.
Ask any coach or trainer in the world can tell you, “Nothing ever happens without a Big WHY."
Hi, I'm Doug Turet and I like to say that "I arrived with my WHY"! Soon after I was born in 1960. I learned that everyone in my family were super high-achievers and entrepreneurs, and that it was "just naturally" expected that I would be, too. The only minor complication was that I arrived with crossed eyes, flat feet, wobbly ankles and knees and the confusing combo of a highly curious and creative mind and learning disabilities that prevented me from doing much of what was expected of me, at a time when such things were not only neither understood nor appreciated by anyone, but didn't even have names, yet!
Since I was obviously smart and asked a lot of really good questions, everyone "just naturally assumed" that if I wasn't a superstar in every other way, I must be acting out in defiance, so you can imagine what happened next. In short, , my “Big WHY” was always my drive to make sense of the world around me, find a meaningful place in it and see if I could find ways to make it a better one for myself and others, despite all of the daily verbal and physical reminders from those around me that I didn't belong and wasn't welcome in their world.
Early on, it was devastatingly painful to be the nerdy, awkward kid who no one wanted as their friend. After awhile though, it occurred to me that if I looked at it all differently — if I re-framed all of the exclusion, rejection, insults and isolation, then instead of them being a curse, they could be a kind of freedom to explore new things on my own terms, to find out what I could be good at on my own, while nobody else was looking — and whole new vistas opened up for me! Before too long (and we're talking months, not years), I began racking up achievements and casually networking with people whom those who'd excluded me had always looked up to as their idols and heroes! Rock stars, movie stars, captains of industry? Hey, they were all just people, right? So why not ask them a few questions? Maybe I could learn something!
To some, it seemed like pretty heady stuff, but to me, it was "just me being me": asking the kinds of questions that made sense to me to ask, and following the info I received along its natural pathways, some of which (in hindsight) really were pretty amazing!
Highs and Lows
You might not think that the crushing despair of being homeless, jobless and starving, sleeping in cardboard boxes and abandoned cars and stinking so much that bathing in a polluted river would be a great moment in anyone's life, or that hanging out with the rich and famous in New York City could feel like a low point, but both of these and the slow and not always steady climb up from victimization through to triumph; from thankless, backbreaking physical labor jobs and low end retail work to self-employment, and then on to coaching others would turn out to be some of the meaningful education I've ever received.
Why? Because it put me on equal footing with a far greater swath of the people of the world, and helped me to not only understand what life is like at all of those levels but be grateful for each and every new accomplishment, no matter how great or small, because they're ALL great, no matter how small they may originally seem! (And so are you!!)
I know you can do it – because I have – and I'm here to HELP you make it happen!
