Grow Your Network: Sean DeLaney Is A Consciousness Coach

For years, I've been connecting with interesting people and documenting insights that might help my clients and myself. What was once private is now (mostly) public.

People often ask: "How do you know all these people?" and "How do you connect these (re: random) ideas?" The answer is simple: consistent relationship cultivation and thoughtful note taking. My north star is trusting my instincts, my maps are the constellations in these reflections.

Find my Personal Archive on CultishCreative.com, watch me build a better Personal Network on the Cultish Creative YouTube channel, and follow me on social media (LinkedIn and X).

This approach has helped dozens of clients strengthen their networks and unlock new opportunities. You can:

• Steal these ideas directly

• Hire me to implement them with you

• Create your own combination that works for you

I can't promise you'll learn from me, but you'll definitely learn something with me. Let's go. Count it off: 1-2-3-4…

Do you know Sean Delaney? Author, coach, poet, and deep thinker who helps others understand the stories that guide their lives? Creator of "When Life Begins to Whisper" and other works that explore the human experience with remarkable clarity?

If not, allow me to introduce you. Sean has been working with clients for years, helping them cultivate awareness and transform their relationships with themselves. I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the ability to recognize and transform the hidden narratives that shape our lives.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Cultish Creative YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you'll get a revealing peek into how he thinks about awareness, storytelling, and the powerful principles that guide our lives.

In the meantime, I wanted to pull 3 key lessons from my time with Sean to share with you (and drop into my Personal Archive).

Read on and you'll find a quote with a lesson and a reflection you can Take to work with you, Bring home with you, and Leave behind with your legacy.

WORK: Cultivate Awareness to See Your Stories

Key Concept: The stories we tell ourselves - often unconsciously - shape our decisions, behaviors, and ultimately our entire lives. By bringing these narratives into awareness, we can choose whether to continue living them or create new ones.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: So your company wants to get bigger - why? What do you want from bigger? What does bigger even mean to you? I have this conversation a lot. You can interject the same for more of anything. They challenge us to define not just what and why, but also, enough.

One of my favorite exercises is to think through if something worked out to be wildly successful or disastrously bad. In the good scenario, would we be genuinely happy from the new vantage point? Sometimes, we won’t be. It’s good to think that through. Likewise, in the terrible scenario, what would we have learned from being wrong about this process?

I am frequently so ambitious, and so wrong about things that seem smart in the moment, being aware of these story scripts and their professional applications is life-altering to me. In the same way I left my corporate job for an independent company because I didn’t like what the corporate version of “success” looked like, I love helping others ask similar hard (hard!) questions until we can answer them with the confidence to act.

Work question for you: What "story" might be unconsciously guiding your career decisions right now? If you could make it conscious, would you choose to keep living it?

LIFE: Intention, Presence, Reflection

Key Concept: Every meaningful activity can be approached with these three phases: being intentional before, fully present during, and reflective after. This framework transforms ordinary experiences into opportunities for growth and connection.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: If I don’t tell myself, before I do the dishes - what am I about to clean, where will the clean ones go, and how will this feel after - I’m setting myself up for disaster. I’ll have clean cups stacked unsafely on top of coffee pots, knives hanging off of edges, and a panicking wife who says, “Thank you so much for picking this up while I was at work, this looks great, and OH MY GOD THOSE KNIVES YOU’LL KILL A DOG IF THAT FALLS?!?!”

If that’s true when I do the dishes, can you even imagine how true that is when I make a real life decision? Sean’s segmentation of this process is going to stick with me for a long time. It’s a call-back to our original Just Press Record with Mark McCartney too, where presence and attention remain the cornerstones of everything we do.

The principle of being present in every act - from doing the dishes, to a dog walk, to talking to my wife after a long day of work - it’s so much more than just a tactic.

Life Question For You: Where in your daily routine could you insert small thresholds—even just 1-2 minutes—to be more intentional before important transitions?

LEGACY: Principles Over Techniques

Key Concept: Rather than focusing on specific techniques or tactics, understanding the underlying principles allows for deeper mastery and creative adaptation in any domain.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Every little kid I know wants to be a YouTuber. It’s the new professional athlete I guess. The jury is out if the odds are better, but I fear they might be worse. Still, the flaw in the logic is still the same. So is the size of the dreaming, which you don’t want to undercut the whole way either.

Even when a kid knows they want to do something wildly unrealistic, you have a chance to share a moment with them. You have a chance, in all your wordly, adult, non-pro-athlete wisdom, to start to point out the fundamental principles behind the work, and help that young person look for small steps of alignment.

They’ll figure out what they’re going to be on their own, eventually. If you can help them see the principles, they might just end up loving something in a domain they never new existed at their age, for what underpins it. That’s a very real, yet very magical lesson.

Legacy question for you: What principle (not tactic) has been most transformative in your professional life, and how could you pass that understanding on to others?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

• Connect with Sean DeLaney on LinkedIn, X and his website (What Got You There),

• Check out his book "When Life Begins To Whisper" and

• Take a moment to reflect on all these ideas!

You have a Personal Network and a Personal Archive just waiting for you to build them up stronger. Look at your work, look at your life, and look at your legacy - and then, start small in each category. Today it's one person and one reflection. Tomorrow? Who knows what connections you'll create.

Last thing: Don't forget to click reply/here and tell me who you're adding to your network and why! Plus, if you already have your own Personal Archive too, let me know, I'm creating a database.