About Charles Browne – Identity & Purpose Coach

Since we’re gettingvulnerable here…

My name is Charlie. I’m a certified Flow peak performance coach as well as one of Dr. Robert Glover’s certified No More Mr. Nice Guy coaches.  While I’ve managed to carve out quite a pleasant existence for myself, I’ve also been seriously lonely and scared. For most of my life, I felt unworthy of love.I grew up on an emotional roller coaster, with one parent drowning in depression and addiction while the other battled anxiety and panic attacks from a lifetime of sexual and emotional abuse. Both were locked in a cycle of repeated abuse, trying to raise a family without Oprah.Needless to say, my emotional needs weren’t a very high priority, and my adolescent brain started to believe that those needs weren’t being met because I didn’t deserve them. So, I withdrew. I went numb. I lived between the lines, trying not to call attention to myself. I put up walls. I became unapproachable.If I didn’t talk to you at that party or networking event or in the hallway, it’s not because I thought you were beneath me but because I was taught that whatever I needed wasn’t important. I didn’t think you’d be interested. I didn’t think I’d have anything to offer you.If I looked perfect from the outside, it’s because I felt so ugly and small inside. Maybe if I made the outside look perfect, I’d be worthy of your time.I remember the exact moment when I broke through my pain.The first time I looked into my daughter’s eyes, before she even knew I was her father, I knew I would never let her grow up the way I did, and I vowed to protect her (and eventually her brother) from the kind of loneliness I experienced.I’ve broken a lot of cycles in my life in an attempt to not pass them on to the next generation.Back in 2012, as I watched my father’s choices narrow by the day, I instinctively understood that the choices he’d made years prior were bearing fruit. Or in this case, not bearing fruit. Addiction made those choices for him.

So, as I sat sanctimoniously at my computer for close to ten months searching for a ‘job’ I realized that the circumstances of my life were, inescapably, the result of my own doing, just like I’d decided his were.And what’s worse, is that for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. What would make me happy. Who I wanted to be. Almost fifty and no closer to those answers than I was when I ran away and joined the Navy right out of high school.But, I did know some stuff. I had begun to understand what made a business successful. And what made successful people happy.But the most important thing I knew is that none of it: success, happiness, purpose was external. We’re born with absolutely everything we need to love and be loved, to be successful and happy. Only our choices cause deviation.I’ve coached a LOT of people who are asking the same questions I once asked myself. Who am I? What do I want? What am I good at? What’s my passion?