Season 1, Episode 1: The Fear of Slowing Down
"You don't need to earn your rest. You need to protect it."
There's a sound you never forget: the slow, steady beeping of a hospital monitor reminding you your body's still working, even when you've stopped showing up for it.
That sound came after years of two-hour commutes, constant business travel, and performing competence in rooms that made it clear I didn't belong.
As a gay Puerto Rican man who grew up in poverty in the Bronx during the crack epidemic and AIDS crisis, I learned early: a closed mouth doesn't get fed. So I overperformed my way into LinkedIn, Google, Uber, and Tesla—driving over $600M in revenue impact.
But all that hustle led to one place: an emergency room, dehydrated and collapsing.
In this episode, I open up about:
The moment my body started screaming because I wouldn't listen to the whispers
How survival mode became my operating system—and why that almost killed me
The mentors who modeled both exhaustion and recovery
What it took to rebuild my life from the inside out
Why slowing down didn't make me weaker—it made me strategic
By the end, you'll be ready to ask yourself three questions:
What am I afraid will happen if I slow down?
What am I losing by refusing to rest?
And what would it look like if peace was my new measure of success?
