I am Shadi Dakdouk. Mastery Coach & Business Integration Consultant.

My daughter changed my life, even before she was born. The moment Christina – my wife – told me about the pregnancy, I started thinking about what I will be passing on to my child.

I grew up in Lebanon with my mother, I managed to graduate in business from the American University of Beirut, and every sense of comfort provided to us in life came from the sacrifices of my father in Angola as he lifted the family from necessity to survival. Despite some stints here and there, I spent the majority of my career working with the sister companies my father had built, trying to lift them from survival to something more. No other path I had found up to that point made sense to me – whether the various employments I took or my time as a freelance marketer, so I stayed, despite the unease it caused me. My thinking was, since I wasn’t sure about my own path, why not walk that of my father? At least I’d be honoring his legacy.

That remained the case until my daughter came into the picture.

And I did what I once thought was unthinkable. I quit.

Christina and I left Angola within a month of finding out about the pregnancy with no plan B and no alternative income. It wasn’t about courage or taking risks, but there was no other choice I could’ve made that I could live with. The inherited path I once walked with unease turned into claustrophobic walls closing in on every sense of my being. The suffocation was unbearable, and I couldn’t let my daughter see me like that.

So I let it all collapse, and in that dissolution of all that I’ve ever known, I found my calling.        

                My Calling