Editor’s Note: If I had been working with a coach twenty years ago, my life would have taken a very different path. A good coach helps you decipher the noise in your life and forces you to stop and listen to the things you are desperately trying to ignore. The story below is exactly why I do the work I do today, and it holds one of the most foundational coaching lessons I share with my clients. I hope it helps you tune in to your own warnings.
I should have realized something was wrong when Kaiser assigned me a liver specialist.
That seems obvious now. At the time, it barely registered.
Looking back, I received warning after warning for nearly twenty years. The problem wasn’t that nobody told me. The problem was that I heard the words without ever actually hearing the message.
One of the first warnings came when I was diagnosed with NASH, which the medical community has since rebranded as MASH (Metabolic dysfunction-Associated Steatohepatitis).
To be honest, I don’t remember being particularly alarmed. If you have ever spent time in a Kaiser Permanente building, you know the vibe. They are always a few degrees too cold, and they all share that exact same sterile, aggressively clinical smell. It’s an environment designed for efficiency, not epiphanies.
So, when the doctor threw another acronym at me, it just felt like standard hospital procedure. Medical professionals love acronyms. They toss them around casually, assuming everyone else attended the same med school classes they did.
What I heard that day in that cold room was: “Your liver isn’t perfect.”
What they actually meant was: “Bill, your liver is in serious trouble.”
Those are two very different conversations. But I was an expert at curating my own reality, so I took the acronym, filed it away, and went right back to my life.
Years later came another diagnosis. Hemochromatosis.
I remember exactly where I was when I got that news. We were in Scottsdale, Arizona. My father-in-law—an absolute rock star of a man—was inside the hospital, very sick. (He eventually passed away, and looking back, he probably didn’t pay attention to his own sickness early enough either. We humans are notoriously stubborn like that).
I was sitting in an outside waiting area when my doctor called. It was one of those strange Arizona days that doesn’t seem to know what season it wants to be. The sky was heavy and gloomy. The air felt unusually chilly for Scottsdale, biting at my jacket. Yet, riding underneath the chill was the faint, sweet smell of spring in the breeze. Nothing about the day fit together.
The doctor on the phone explained that I had hemochromatosis, a genetic condition that causes the body to store way too much iron.
I remember thinking, “Great. Now what?”
Then she explained the treatment.
Bloodletting.
Not “routine blood draws.” Not “therapeutic phlebotomy.”
Bloodletting.
The moment she said the word, my brain slammed the brakes on modern medicine and immediately started watching a medieval movie.
I pictured leeches. I pictured some poor, plague-ridden peasant lying on a wooden table while a guy named Igor prepared sharp instruments in the flickering candlelight. I may have even pictured Dracula.
Meanwhile, the doctor was calmly explaining a standard healthcare procedure over the phone while I was mentally wandering through the Dark Ages, waiting for someone to hand me a wooden stake and some garlic.
In fairness to me, “bloodletting” is a terrible marketing term.
I actually started the therapeutic phlebotomy a couple of weeks later. I came home for my first appointment, and because of that decision, I was not with my wife when she held her father’s hand as he passed away. It is a heavy, painful reality to look back on.
Years later, I learned that the procedure is incredibly simple, safe, and effective. But at the time, sitting in the chilly Scottsdale courtyard, I was far more interested in the absurdity of the word than the severity of the warning.
That was a recurring theme in my life. I heard the details. I missed the message.
The truth is that my liver had been trying to get my attention for years. The doctors knew it. My lab work knew it. My body knew it. My wife definitely knew it.
Yet somehow, I remained completely convinced that everything was basically fine.
I was successful. I was functioning. I was busy. And busy people are absolute experts at postponing reality.
The funny thing about warning signs is that they rarely arrive with sirens and flashing red lights. Most of the time, they show up as quiet conversations, subtle physical symptoms, or gentle nudges that are incredibly easy to explain away.
We’re getting through the day. We’re paying the bills. We’re keeping up appearances. So, we tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later.
Then came the day that changed everything.
After years of warnings, diagnoses, blood tests, specialists, and gentle advice to “cut back” on drinking, I found myself facing the brutal reality that my liver had finally reached its limit. It was failing.
At one point, a doctor looked at me from the foot of my hospital bed and asked a very direct question:
“Are you going to stop drinking now that you need a liver?”
Without missing a beat, I challenged her accusatory tone: “Well, no doctors ever told me I had to stop drinking.”
The terrifying part is that, at the time, I actually believed it.
In my mind, I had heard “cut back.” I had heard “be careful.” I had heard “your liver isn’t perfectly healthy.” What I hadn’t heard was the blaring alarm underneath all of those polite medical suggestions.
Looking back, dozens of people had effectively told me I was dying. What my response really meant was: “You never told me in a way I was finally willing to hear.”
There is an important difference.
Whether it was my massive ego or my addiction that kept me from understanding what I was hearing for all those years, it really didn’t matter anymore. The doctors said I was an alcoholic, so I was going to agree with them in order to get the only thing that could save my life: a new liver.
Today, people sometimes ask whether I identify as an alcoholic. My answer is that the label matters far less than the outcome. People can debate whether liver disease comes from MASH, alcohol, hemochromatosis, genetics, bad luck, or some toxic cocktail of all of them.
Those are worthwhile conversations. But they are not the conversation that saved my life.
The conversation that saved my life happened when I finally realized I had been given a choice. If I wanted a new liver, I had to stop drinking. Period. No negotiations. No exceptions. No clever arguments. No debating definitions. Something had to change.
I made a promise. If I was fortunate enough to receive a liver—if someone I would never meet made the ultimate sacrifice so that their tragedy could become my opportunity to live—I would never drink again.
I’ve kept that promise.
And keeping it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of my entire life.
People sometimes assume that giving up alcohol meant losing something. In reality, I gained far more than I ever surrendered.
I gained clarity. I gained purpose. I gained deeper faith. I gained better relationships and a healthier marriage. I gained a much clearer understanding of just how little control I actually have over the universe. I even gained a little extra money in my bank account. Funny how that works.
Most importantly, I gained perspective.
And this is where the lesson begins.
The older I get, the more I realize this lesson extends far beyond health and liver disease. Many people are living highly successful lives while quietly ignoring the warning signs flashing all around them.
A career that no longer feels meaningful. A relationship that desperately needs attention. A stress level that has slowly become the “new normal.” A dream that keeps getting postponed for “someday.” A body that is quietly asking for help. A life that looks perfectly successful on the outside but feels entirely unbalanced on the inside.
The warning signs are almost always there. The question is whether we are willing to hear them.
Ironically, needing a liver transplant may have been the best thing that ever happened to my growth as a person.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I lost a career I had spent decades building. I faced fears I never wanted to face. But what I discovered along the way is that sobriety wasn’t simply about giving a substance up. It was about getting a life back. A better, more intentional life.
It taught me a lesson I now share with my coaching clients every day: You do not have to wait for a crisis to change.
The warning signs in your life are not punishments. They are invitations.
They are invitations to pause. Invitations to reflect. Invitations to take one intentional step forward before life forces the issue and takes the steering wheel out of your hands.
Life whispers long before it screams. The challenge is not whether life is speaking to us. The challenge is whether we are willing to listen.
I wish I had listened sooner. But I am endlessly grateful I listened eventually.
Sometimes, personal growth begins with a whisper. Sometimes, it takes a liver specialist.
I call the process I went through—finding the way back to balance, health, and living my core values—Serenitizing.
Are you ready to serenitize your life?
