WO Magazine Spring 2016 | Page 54

WELLNESS LIFESTYLE Lifestyle Features My business gives me the opportunity to travel the world, and to meet people who are living what I’d call authentic lives. They’re a varied bunch and they’re scattered from one end of the globe to another but they all share one thing in common. They know who they are, what they’re good at and what they need to be happy. I think they’ve found a magic we should all strive for. I met Ted in a mud encrusted jeep in Costa Rica. He was driving. I was laughing. living a life authentic ...true tales from the open road A former dot-com genius, this guy had once made so much money he barely had time to count it. He’d had a huge house in Santa Monica and more frequent flyer points than he could ever use. He lived his life in the air, flying between meetings on both coasts. Ted really had it all…except for the wife who divorced him because he was never around…she got the Santa Monica house. And the kids he’d forgotten to have because he was always so busy. And any enjoyment he’d ever found in his career. Yes… other than those things, Ted had it all. In fact, he was forty and fed up. His doctors told him he might not be around to be fed up for much longer if he didn’t do something about his blood pressure and his stress levels. So Ted decided to give himself a fortieth birthday gift – a month of holiday time to learn how to surf ## | whiteoaksclub.com | spring 2016