Finding your second wind

How do you navigate when you have no idea where you're going?

Last week's guest on The Friday Fireside knows this all too well.

David Spinks is the influential author of The Business of Belonging and was a co-founder of CMX, a passionate hub for community professionals.

In his powerful Substack post, A Letter from the Abyss, he shared his experience of stepping down from the company he co-founded and figuring out what’s next. 

This was his first interview since stepping down and the lifequakes that threatened to swallow him whole, and David didn’t hold back.

By turns candid and insightful, he shared his profound journey from feeling “hollowed out” by years of ambitious achievement - fuelled by a sense of deficiency - to doing the deep inner work that’s allowed him to finally embrace his intrinsic “enoughness.” 

And he offered a powerful reframing of ambition, contrasting the “dirty fuel” of ego-driven striving with the “clean fuel” that emerges from self-love and acceptance. 

David described how hitting rock bottom was the painful but ultimately healing push he needed to confront and re-parent aspects of himself, purge long-suppressed emotions, and discover the space for his true self to arise. 

Drawing on practices like Internal Family Systems, conscious breathing, and zazen meditation, his hard-won wisdom points towards the ongoing integration of being and doing.

And, ultimately, taking action from a state of presence and self-acceptance rather than from a place of feeling lacking.

Here are nine takeaways from the conversation:

1. Hitting rock bottom can become a gift

David’s abyss had it all; devastating professional experiences, family losses, despair, and even rushing his infant daughter to the ER.

He now sees those immense struggles as a crucial gateway to doing profound inner work.

“I believe that all of those struggles were a wonderful gift because they cracked me open and allowed me to go so deep into myself.

It was brutal. It was hell. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And I'm really grateful for it.”

2. Are you burnt-out or hollowed-out?

Many of us know what burn-out feels like. But David drew a distinction between that kind of physical and mental exhaustion and a deeper existential emptiness. 

Despite having a purpose and meaningful work, he felt hollowed out at a soul level, with everything he was focusing on and prioritising “not filling that hole” or meeting that deep inner yearning.

3. The dirty fuel that drives us

David’s inner work revealed to him how his previous ambitions stemmed from seeking validation, reputation, and self-worth through achievements rather than an internal sense of enoughness. 

“The ambition was coming from a belief that I was not enough. So my fear of not being enough was driving me to create, to seek reputation, to seek success, to people-please, to avoid conflict.”

He described this as “dirty fuel” that drives an unsustainable cycle.

4. Getting through discomfort to enoughness

If you’ve ever put the wrong fuel in your tank, you know that you need to drain it before you can add what’s right.

To transition from “dirty fuel” takes staying in the discomfort. But as David discovered, this is the space where enoughness can finally arise.

“The clean fuel will arrive if you can sit in that empty space and just surrender to it - to not knowing, to not achieving, to not building, to not needing to do anything, to just being.

Because just being is enoughness.”

5. Enoughness unleashes fresh energy

Running on dirty fuel takes its toll. But self-acceptance and genuinely recognising our intrinsic worthiness unleash a new kind of regenerative energy. 

And we can discover a sense of motivation that’s free from ego, reputational needs, or fears of inadequacy.

“When I finally started to believe it, ‘I am enough’, then the clean fuel started to come in. Because when you start to truly believe that you are enough, it's abundant.”

6. No bad parts, only wounded ones

One of the modalities that’s helped David is Internal Family Systems (IFS). 

Here, our inner conflicts are not viewed as bad parts to suppress but as inner aspects that have formed to protect us. It means these conflicts can be healed through compassionate self-inquiry.

By remembering that we contain multitudes, we are better able to engage with the parts of ourselves that cause discomfort and eventually turn them into allies.

7. Breathe into your emotions

Another of the key practices David has embraced is breathwork, from simple self-regulation techniques to Holotropic sessions that purge deep emotion.

He now uses awareness of the breath with his coaching clients when they struggle to feel.

By slowing down and breathing into difficult emotions, we can stay present with them and give them the space to be fully felt and processed.

8. Return on Energy

On our twice-yearly group coaching program Vision 20/20, we talk about effortless success.

Dropping the profit/loss idea of ROI in favour of whether activities drain your energy or help replenish it makes room for infinite yet sustainable growth. As David identified,

“If I put energy into something .. do I feel like I have more energy when I leave it or less? And if there's more, I can keep doing that indefinitely.”

9. Everyday integration

“It shows up with my kids, being present with them, with my wife. Everything. 

It’s ‘What's the intention that you are trying to bring right now?’, noticing when things pull you away, and bringing yourself back.”

The real test of healing comes off the meditation mat.

It means living from a place of presence and clear intention, seeing when conditioning pulls you off-centre, and gently returning to truth.

What might be different for you if you came from a place of enoughness?

Watch the whole conversation

This one’s for you if…

• You've ever felt a gnawing sense of emptiness or lack of fulfilment despite achieving outward success.

• You're tired of being driven by insecurities, people-pleasing, and the need for external validation.

• You want to understand the difference between ambition fueled by self-doubt versus ambition coming from a place of true self-acceptance.

• You've hit “rock bottom” and are ready to use it as a catalyst for profound personal growth and transformation.

David’s openness about his experience is humbling.

The centred, grounded energy with which he shares it is extraordinary.

Through the serendipity of healing modalities and support coming to him, and discovering his appreciation of coaching and love of writing, David is now building a new life on new foundations.

But it took letting go for this new life to emerge - what Danaan Parry calls ‘the trapeze’:

“I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and, for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar.”

Is it time for you to let go of the old and open your hands to invite something new? Join our community, dip your toes in with an in-person Masterclass, or dive into transformation at one of our life-changing events.

Notes

Many thanks to David for his honesty, presence, courage, and vulnerability. Find him at davidspinks.com, subscribe to his Substack, and read The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage.