Leadership Story Talks, Episode 219 · Listen to the full conversation with John Graham HERE
What happens when the life you have been living no longer feels like the life you want to continue?
In this Leadership Story Talks debrief, Jerome Deroy and Julienne Ryan reflect on their conversation with John Graham, whose life has included extraordinary adventure, risk, public service, and eventually a profound shift toward meaning and contribution. His story is dramatic enough that Julienne joked that, while reading his book Quest: Risk, Adventure, and the Search for Meaning, she kept wondering how he was still alive. Yet what stayed with them both was less the danger or the travel than the question all those experiences eventually led John to ask: what has this life been for?
That question sits at the heart of the debrief. John’s earlier life was driven by challenge, independence, toughness, and self-reliance. He pursued difficult experiences and built an identity around being capable, adventurous, and unafraid. Over time, that way of living began to feel less meaningful. The accomplishments were still real, but they no longer seemed sufficient on their own, and John began to rethink what those experiences should lead to.
When the Story Changes Direction
Jerome reflects on the way John’s life turns from individual pursuit toward service. Instead of defining himself through adventure or personal achievement, John began using his experience to champion other people. Through the Giraffe Heroes Project, he and his wife, Ann Medlock, focus attention on people who take meaningful risks in service of others, often under difficult circumstances and without much recognition.
Julienne was struck that John is not “cooling his heels.” He has survived a great deal, learned a great deal, and could easily have decided he had done enough. Instead, he keeps looking for ways to contribute. He never stopped acting; he redirected his energy toward a larger purpose.
Purpose is often discussed as something we discover in a single moment, but John’s story suggests something more gradual. Meaning can emerge through experience and change as we change. What once felt exciting may eventually feel shallow, and the willingness to notice that can become a turning point in itself.
Looking Back to See Forward
Jerome connects John’s life to one of the central values of storytelling: the ability to look back and make sense of what has already happened.
Lived in real time, our lives can feel fragmented. One job follows another. A relationship changes. We move, take a risk, make a mistake, succeed at something, leave something behind. But when we tell the story later, patterns appear: choices we didn’t recognize as choices at the time, beliefs that kept repeating, identities we were protecting, and places where we changed direction.
Jerome asks a simple but powerful question: is this the story I want to continue? That doesn’t mean rejecting the past or pretending it didn’t happen. It means looking at it clearly enough to decide whether it still fits the person we are becoming. The story so far is not necessarily the story that comes next.
The Moment of Reckoning
For John, one of the clearest turning points came during a life-threatening experience on a boat, when he believed he might die. He had faced danger before, but this time something shifted. He promised himself that if he survived, he would stop living the same way and look for something more meaningful. He survived, and he followed through, which is what turned a dramatic realization into a lasting commitment.
Jerome and Julienne are careful to point out that no one needs an extreme experience to make that kind of decision. We don’t need to nearly lose everything before asking whether the story we are living still feels true. We can ask now: What are we pursuing? What are we repeating? What are we carrying forward simply because it is familiar? And what might change if we chose differently?
We Have More Control Than We Think
Life is not fully controllable. Circumstances, other people, illness, loss, and chance all play a role. But within that uncertainty, there are still decisions. Looking back, we can often see moments where we chose to stay or leave, speak up or stay silent, protect ourselves or take a risk. Recognizing that is less about blame than about seeing where agency exists. And if earlier chapters contained choices, future chapters can too.
Jerome and Julienne talk about hearing people tell their stories and then say, very clearly, that they no longer want to live that same story. That moment of recognition can be the beginning of something new. Storytelling doesn’t only help us describe our lives; it can help us revise them.
We’re Not Done
Near the end of the conversation, Julienne offers a thought that captures the spirit of the episode: we’re not done.
John’s life has contained enough chapters for several lifetimes, yet he continues to ask what more he can do. The people he and Ann highlight through the Giraffe Heroes Project reflect that same shift, from being impressive to being useful. The things we have survived, learned, and built can become resources for someone else.
There is optimism in that. We are not fixed by who we were at twenty, forty, or sixty. We can let an old chapter inform the next one without letting it dictate it. Sometimes that begins with looking back, sometimes with admitting the current story no longer fits, and sometimes with one simple question:
What do I want the story to become now?
Listen to the full conversation with John Graham: HERE
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