Geoff Curtis: You're Not Burned Out, You're in Purgatory

I've had north of a hundred authors on this show. This one stuck with me differently, and it's because of one word: Purgatory.

Geoff Curtis spent nearly thirty years building a career in healthcare communications. Title, expertise, platform, the whole thing. Then the company was acquired, his role went redundant, and all of it disappeared at once. What followed wasn't a reinvention arc. It was the discovery that he'd spent his adult life using work to avoid feeling anything.

He picked purgatory on purpose. As he puts it, words like transition imply progress, and he wasn't making any.

The other choice that makes this book different: most people write about this from the far side, after they've figured it out. Geoff is writing from inside it. Three years out and still working through it. There's no five step plan in here, and some readers are frustrated by that. I think it's the reason the book works.

The idea I keep coming back to is his separation of three things we tend to mash together. Livelihood, identity, and self-worth. Livelihood puts food on the table. That's all it has to be. The trouble starts when livelihood quietly becomes identity, and identity becomes self-worth. Then losing the job isn't a financial event, it's an existential one.

We also got into something that isn't in the book. Four weeks before we talked, Geoff did the Hoffman Process. Eight days, completely unplugged, thirty nine strangers, fifteen hours of prep work and days running 7:15 in the morning to 9:30 at night, all aimed at understanding which of your behavior patterns you inherited from your parents. He says he wishes he'd written the book afterward.

Fair warning, this one is heavier than most. Depression, grief, his father's death, and a lot of honesty about patterns neither of us is done with.

In this episode:

• Why he chose purgatory over transition
• Livelihood versus identity versus self-worth
• Thirty years of running on external validation
• Running as emotional suppression, and how to tell it from progress
• New metrics for happiness, and why the old ones keep coming back
• Investing in yourself, therapy, and the Hoffman Process
• Why people doubt themselves inside corporate, not just outside it
• The imposter syndrome nobody on his team ever mentioned to each other
• Everything is a choice, and why we only price the downside

ABOUT THE GUEST

Geoff Curtis spent nearly thirty years in healthcare communications before an acquisition made his role redundant. He's the author of Embracing Your Own Purgatory, written from inside the transition rather than after it, and he now runs a nonprofit he built with his wife that works with college students.

LINKS

The book: Embracing Your Own Purgatory — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere books are sold

Author site: https://geoffreycurtis.com/)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreycurtis/

THE IDEAS WORTH KEEPING

Livelihood is not identity is not self-worth. Three things, and we let them fuse. "Livelihood puts food on the table. If you don't make the livelihood the identity, then you're good."

Transition implies progress. Purgatory doesn't. That's why he picked the harder word.

Running versus progressing. Both are fine, but you have to evaluate the ending. Why did you leave? Bored, burned out, actually moving toward something? Skip that and you rinse and repeat for thirty years.

Closer to right than quick. The nonprofit took two and a half years instead of the five months his old metrics demanded. That gap is where the real work happened.

Realism as a Trojan horse. Geoff's admission that he uses "I'm a realist" to smuggle in negativity is the sharpest self-observation in the episode.

You're not your patterns. The Hoffman framing: you absorb your parents' patterns as a kid to stay close to them, rebel against them as a teenager, then repeat them under stress for the rest of your life until somebody shows you where they came from.

The conversation nobody has. Geoff and a former direct report both had imposter syndrome the whole time and never said a word. "I always thought you had it together, and I wanted to make sure you thought I had it together."

TIMESTAMPS

Estimated from the transcript. Spot-check and shift for cold open and sting.

• 00:00 — Why this book landed differently
• 01:31 — Why he chose the word purgatory
• 02:46 — Not brave enough to say we're unfinished
• 02:51 — Brett: I think I was in purgatory while still employed
• 03:53 — His wife knew it was going to hit him before he did
• 05:08 — Identity, self-worth, and what work was really providing
• 05:49 — Thirty years of running on external validation
• 06:48 — Why there's no path out in the book, only questions
• 08:30 — Livelihood is not identity is not self-worth
• 09:35 — Separate the money from the mission
• 10:49 — The college senior who wants success and fun
• 12:36 — First generation college, and the expectations that come with it
• 13:49 — Running when things get uncomfortable
• 14:25 — Evaluate the ending, or you'll repeat it
• 15:45 — Running as emotional suppression, and his father</