What is *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up* about?

*Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up* explores how radical self-inquiry—examining one’s emotional patterns and childhood influences—can transform leadership and personal growth. Jerry Colonna blends personal stories, client case studies, and frameworks from Buddhism/Jungian therapy to help leaders confront self-sabotage, build resilience, and align their professional lives with deeper values.

Who should read *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up*?

This book suits entrepreneurs, CEOs, and professionals seeking to overcome burnout, self-doubt, or toxic work patterns. It’s particularly valuable for leaders ready to examine their emotional baggage and childhood narratives to foster healthier teams and relationships.

Is *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up* worth reading?

Yes, *Reboot* is praised for its raw honesty and actionable insights. Unlike generic leadership guides, it provides deep psychological tools for self-discovery, making it ideal for readers willing to engage in vulnerable introspection to improve their leadership and personal lives.

What is radical self-inquiry in *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up*?

Radical self-inquiry involves relentlessly questioning one’s motives, fears, and behavioral patterns. Colonna uses prompts like *“How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”* to help leaders uncover subconscious biases and break cycles of exhaustion or conflict.

What are key quotes from *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up*?

Notable quotes include: - *“Leadership is the path into adulthood.”* - *“How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”* These emphasize self-accountability and the link between maturity and effective leadership.

How does *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up* address burnout?

Colonna argues burnout stems from misalignment between one’s actions and core values. By examining family narratives and societal expectations, readers learn to set boundaries, delegate effectively, and lead from a place of wholeness rather than depletion.

What frameworks does Jerry Colonna use in *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up*?

The book integrates: - **Jungian shadow work** (confronting repressed traits). - **Buddhist mindfulness** (non-attachment to outcomes). - **Narrative therapy** (rewriting limiting personal stories)

Are there criticisms of *Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up*?

Some may find its introspective approach overly intense or impractical for quick fixes. It requires vulnerability and time, which could challenge readers preferring structured, step-by-step leadership strategies.

Reboot

Leadership and the Art of Growing Up

Jerry Colonna

4.5(2 Reviews)

Overview of Reboot

In "Reboot," renowned "CEO Whisperer" Jerry Colonna combines Buddhism and Jungian therapy to revolutionize leadership. What if professional success requires emotional healing first? Discover why Silicon Valley executives seek Colonna's radical self-inquiry methods for both personal growth and compassionate business leadership.

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Chapter 1

The Courage to Lead with Your Whole Self

In a world obsessed with leadership hacks and quick fixes, Jerry Colonna's "Reboot" stands as a radical counterpoint. This isn't just another business book-it's a soul-searching journey that has transformed countless leaders, including executives at companies like Etsy and Twitter. Colonna, once a successful venture capitalist who helped build New York's tech ecosystem alongside Fred Wilson, found himself standing at the edge of Ground Zero after 9/11, wealthy and accomplished yet contemplating suicide. His personal breakdown became his breakthrough, leading him to develop a coaching methodology that tech CEOs and entrepreneurs now wait months to experience. Through "radical self-inquiry," Colonna guides leaders to examine how their childhood experiences and core beliefs shape their leadership behaviors. The book's profound impact has made it required reading in executive programs at top business schools and earned praise from figures like Parker Palmer and Sharon Salzberg. At its heart, "Reboot" offers a revolutionary premise: the path to becoming a better leader is inseparable from the journey of becoming a more integrated human.

Chapter 2

The Formula: How Better Humans Make Better Leaders

When I found myself standing before a group of struggling leaders, I spontaneously created a formula on the whiteboard that would become the foundation of my work: Practical Skills + Radical Self-inquiry + Sharing with Peers = Enhanced Leadership + Greater Resiliency. While most leadership books focus on the "how" of leadership-the practical skills-I've discovered that understanding the "why" behind our actions is equally crucial. Radical self-inquiry forms the core of this approach. It's the process by which self-deception becomes compassionately exposed until no mask can hide us anymore. This inquiry often reveals childhood patterns that have shaped who we are as leaders, allowing us to see our lives not as random acts but as forces that have molded us into who we've become. The sharing component isn't about casual conversation but about asking a genuinely curious "How are you?"-not the throwaway line we typically use, but a question that invites honest introspection. When someone bravely admits their troubles, others realize they're not alone in their struggles. What makes this approach powerful is that it doesn't just create better leaders-it builds resilience. I want people to survive, to be happy, to see their families, and to rest peacefully knowing they're okay even when things don't go as planned. This resilience ultimately leads to equanimity, a state of mental calmness regardless of circumstances. The space between our memories and the stories we create about ourselves is where we live our lives. By exploring this space through radical self-inquiry, we can emerge as the leaders we were born to be. This approach may not feel immediately practical, but it is undeniably useful, leading to a tailor-made approach to leadership that's uniquely yours. What we don't examine in our lives impedes our happiness, often tricking us into using our careers, relationships, and organizations to try healing childhood wounds. By understanding how our core belief systems influence our experiences, we can extract meaning from suffering-but only if we use leadership challenges to grow and discover our "why."

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Chapter 3

Money, Safety, and the Ghosts of Our Past

As a boy, I spent hours playing Monopoly with my mother, keeping my money hidden under the board while mentally tracking it. This early relationship with money became intertwined with my sense of safety. My grandparents' house was my sanctuary, filled with comforting smells: lemon drops, coffee, roses, and figs from a tree brought from Italy. These smells meant safety, and money became associated with that safety-a way to escape poverty and chaos. Years later, lying on my psychoanalyst's couch, I admitted I wanted Bill Gates-level wealth-enough "lemon drops forever" to feel truly secure. Money and success brought admiration and access to power. People who might have dismissed me as just a "schmuck from Flatbush" now valued my opinion. Success became proof of my worth as a human being. It shocked me that becoming rich would make me suicidal, yet there I stood at the edge of Ground Zero after 9/11, successful but hollow. Despite my beautiful family, wealth, and respect, I felt empty-seen but not seen, in my life but not living. At forty, I finally had to confront my messy baggage-the patterns and beliefs that had led me to seek safety through wealth accumulation. Our lives are like film-seemingly fluid but actually twenty-four frames per second, each frame containing feelings, beliefs, and ghosts of our past. Slowing down this movie through radical self-inquiry reveals a different way to live and break old patterns. Working with a successful 64-year-old client contemplating retirement, I noticed how his father's disapproval still haunted his decisions. This reminded me of my own father's warning: "The higher up the pole the monkey climbs, the more his ass shows." His message was clear: stay low, stay out of sight, stay safe. Money, safety, shame, belonging, fear of being found out or not being seen-these paradoxes continue to shape us, but who we choose to become is awakened by the truths we choose to tell. There are no sudden epiphanies that unwind our twisted lives, only knowable moments that help us become the adults we want to be through radical self-inquiry.

Chapter 4

The Warrior Stance: Strong Back, Open Heart

On a perfect night with stars shining brightly and the rhythmic ka-thump of cars crossing Brooklyn Bridge, I sat with Chad Dickerson on a rooftop in Dumbo. Tomorrow he would announce that he was stepping down as CEO of Etsy after six years. Despite this difficult transition, I saw something powerful in him-something even more important than success or failure as CEO. Learning to lead yourself is the hardest part of becoming a leader. My clients come feeling lonely with nowhere to put their feelings. Self-leadership is difficult because we're wired to look outward-to feel pain and look for who hurt us, to feel loss and seek someone to blame. It requires facing the painful reality of who we are. I asked Chad to stand with feet shoulder-width apart, back firm but not tight, arms at his sides with palms open. "What do you feel?" I asked. "Strong but... exposed," he replied. Exactly-strong back and open heart. This is the warrior stance. The strong back represents fiscal discipline, clarity, vision, direction, delegation, accountability, and knowing right from wrong. The open heart is about caring for people, purpose, and meaning-working toward something greater than ego or soothing worries. Parker Palmer explains leading from within through a Hasidic tale: A disciple asks why Torah says to place holy words "upon" rather than "in" our hearts. The rabbi answers that our hearts are closed, so we place words on top until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in. The warrior stance is the only true way to meet reality, creating conditions where inner and outer selves dance together. It allows us to say, "Here I am, mess and all, do with me what you will." The toughest aspect of leadership is meeting the world as it is. I share the story of Milarepa, the Buddhist saint who returned to his cave to find it filled with demons. First, he tried waving his arms to chase them away, but they multiplied. When he tried teaching them Buddha's dharma, they quieted but remained. Only when he asked what they were there to teach him did most disappear. For the final, terrifying demon with bloody fangs, Milarepa put his head into its mouth saying, "Eat me if you wish." With that, the demon vanished. The greatest crucible is bringing forth not just what's in you, but the whole of you-glory and mess alike. Putting your head into the mouth of your demons allows you to take your rightful seat at the table, becoming who you were meant to be.

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Chapter 5

Standing Still in the Space Between Frames

I know both what it's like to be lost and to be found. To be found, you must learn to stand still. As poet David Wagoner writes: "The forest knows / Where you are. You must let it find you." I ended my teen years in the locked psych ward of Cabrini Hospital after attempting suicide with an X-Acto knife. One way I'd coped throughout my childhood was by doing-always busy with academics, plays, student government, politics. The most familiar bodily sensations were my racing heart and sweat beading on my temples. This constant motion was an attempt to gather "lemon drops"-believing my exhaustion came from not doing enough, so the solution was to do more, faster. I raced through days, sometimes sleeping only on the campus quad or in the art library. The world rewarded my frantic pace with promotions, while inside I was dying. Years later, while walking with my kids on the beach, I was struck by a blinding headache that dropped me to my knees. My therapist Dr. Sayres helped me connect my headaches to my suppressed feelings, teaching me to ask: "What am I not saying that needs to be said?" This began my radical self-inquiry. My pain was my soul's way of saying "Wake the fuck up"-I was in a job I couldn't stand, working with people I couldn't trust, living a life that wasn't mine. I was living "divided"-my inner self disconnected from my outer presentation. I coached Victor, a struggling 25-year-old startup founder who questioned whether spending money on coaching was "justifiable." When I asked what he could afford that felt justified, he stammered "$75?" and began crying when I accepted, confessing "I don't feel worthy." He feared slowing down, saying, "If I'm not panting, I feel like I'm not working." He was running from the trauma of war and cancer from his childhood. This belief system-running faster to outrun demons that cause you to doubt your worth-is a terrible strategy. It feeds the anxiety of "never enough," clouds clear thinking, and mistakes motion for meaning. When you unconsciously bend colleagues, friends and family to serve your hunger for love, safety and belonging, you're not leading-you're trying to outrun your demons. Radical self-inquiry demands we stop blaming others, slow down, stand still, breathe, and ask the hardest questions: Who am I? What do I believe? What do success and failure mean to me? How have I been complicit in creating conditions I say I don't want?

Chapter 6

The Irrational Other and Our Unconscious Patterns

We sat at the kitchen table, my father with his newspaper, me picking at the tablecloth, my mother pacing in cigarette smoke. She began rambling about meeting Art Garfunkel at a bowling alley, eventually claiming she was Mrs. Robinson from the famous song. I challenged her delusion, prompting my father's familiar admonition: "Don't upset your mother." Frustrated and frightened, I fled to Coney Island where, at fifteen, I declared this would not be my life. My father's fear-filled warning became branded into my being-"Don't upset the Other." I developed hypervigilance, watching for every clue of others' moods. Under the Wonder Wheel that day, I began to see the futility of engaging with the Irrational Other. I wrote a note to myself: "It's absolutely irrational to try to argue rationally with someone who is being irrational." Software developers call outmoded code buried within current programs "ghosts in the machine"-once useful routines that now hinder operations. I carry millions of such lines of psychological code, operating instructions for navigating relationships. What makes the Other irrational? Sometimes it's genuine mental disorders, but more often it's simply different operating rules-different ghosts in their machines. I work with countless founders trapped in dysfunctional partnerships resembling bad marriages, where each calls the other "stubborn" and "irrational." A CEO client and her co-founder built a successful company that remained mired in indecision and toxic backbiting. Their outwardly idyllic partnership masked deep dysfunction. When her co-founder finally approached her with authentic concerns, she realized she actually needed him to be "disappointing and emotionally distant"-just like her father, whose presence depended on alcohol and who disappeared without explanation. In each case, we unconsciously select partners who trigger our deepest patterns, creating the very conditions we claim to hate. When caught in these patterns, my meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg reminds me that "all beings own their own karma"-their happiness depends on their actions, not my wishes for them. We have a choice: remain stuck, or allow the Irrational Other to wake us up to our painful habits. As Rilke said, loving another means "the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky," while accepting the infinite distances between even the closest people. The painful gift of the Irrational Other is the opportunity to see ourselves more clearly. Their irrationality often stems from our projections-like encountering our reflection in a funhouse mirror, distorted but revealing. Relief comes when we view this distortion as part of an immense sky containing all our traits and those of the Other.

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Chapter 7

Finding Purpose Through Asteroid Strikes

Walking around Wonderland Lake in the Rockies, I contemplate life's symmetry-being closer to my father's death age than to when I first became a father myself. Questions arise with each step: Who am I becoming? What do I believe about the world? What should I do with my life as I become an elder? We all desperately want to move "up and to the right," seeking progress, but what if being lost is part of the path? In August 2001, as markets collapsed and my investments failed, I hiked into the Grand Canyon. Three days into rafting the Colorado River, I felt myself both falling apart and sensing another way forward. Visiting Deer Creek Canyon where Havasupai youth left handprints to mark their passage into adulthood, I wept, asking "What are my handprints?" We emerged from the canyon into September 11, 2001. The market collapse, my canyon epiphany, and the terror of Ground Zero led inexorably to my personal collapse-and ultimately my transformation. Like meteors knocking me into a new orbit, these events placed me on the path I was born to traverse. As Andrew and I circle Wonderland Lake, he insists I've "figured out how to make a living doing the thing you love" and pleads for a plan. I respond enigmatically: "Stop looking for shooting stars." I share how I learned to relax my gaze by the Colorado River, discovering that actively searching prevents seeing what's truly there. Life rarely follows a straight path. Sometimes an unexpected event-an "asteroid strike"-completely changes our trajectory. My own path shifted dramatically when Professor Greenberg awarded me a scholarship that kept me in school and led to an internship at a technology magazine, eventually leading to investing and coaching. We can't plan for asteroid strikes; we can only relax our gaze and let shooting stars streak across our lives. At life's crossroads, we often freeze from fear of choosing unwisely or disappointing others. We desperately want to know which path leads to bliss, as Joseph Campbell advised us to follow. Purpose isn't external to us-it's not a destination. Aliveness comes not from discovering purpose but from living with personal integrity where our outer actions match our inner values. Work becomes an opportunity for daily realignment of inner and outer selves. Transformation happens through radical self-inquiry, withstanding life's asteroid strikes, and turning wounds into healing balms.

Chapter 8

Loving the Crow: Embracing Our Shadows

After years of struggle, I've finally learned to love my whole self and become a warrior. As a teenager, I romanticized self-destructive artists. Only in my fifties have I realized that our harshest inner critics are ironically meant to protect us from humiliation and shame. My client Maria curled into the corner of my couch, hugging a pillow as she confessed, "I hate the fucking product." We hate our creations partly because the vision in our heads never perfectly translates to reality. But most importantly, our frustration is fueled by a persistent critical voice questioning our right to create anything at all. This voice whispers that we're frauds, unworthy of love, belonging nowhere, and therefore unsafe. Jung noted that "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." We place positive and negative attributes that conflict with our sense of who we're supposed to be into our personal shadow-just out of sight, glimpsed only by craning our necks. These disowned qualities continue existing, brewing into a potent cocktail that occasionally explodes into our lives in troubling ways. I first encountered the concept of the Loyal Soldier while returning from Greenland, reading Bill Plotkin's Soulcraft. The image is poignantly simple: a lone soldier on an isolated island, cut off from comrades, defending territory with just an old rifle. These Loyal Soldiers create survival strategies-"Stay small. Don't stand out. Be careful. Don't make mistakes." These strategies were brilliant for childhood survival but become limiting as adults. While the Crow may pester us with self-criticism, he loves us and wants to keep us safe from humiliation. From the question "Am I worthy enough?" flow strategies designed to keep me safe-codependent caretaking, people-pleasing, hypervigilance. Yet these survival mechanisms carried remarkable gifts: my vigilance helped me read rooms as a reporter and investor, my need to please became genuine service to others, my desire to appear calm became actual competence during storms. For leaders, unsorted baggage affects everyone around them. When leaders work from their shadows, the most troubling aspects of organizational culture emerge. Power wielded without self-inquiry creates silent violence in the workplace. Leaders' unexamined issues manifest in various ways: paranoia about competitors, self-sabotaging relationships, or the inability to celebrate success. This is the highest calling of the warrior-leader: to take our seats as humans and build humane companies where it's gloriously safe for others to be human. The leader uses inquiry to see which dragons they're running from and which princesses they're running toward, balancing the soft, open front with the strong back.

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Chapter 9

Heartbreak and the Path to Equanimity

Heartbreak is an inevitable part of life's journey, from the everyday skinning of a child's knee to the death of loved ones. Our struggle to accept life's roller coaster only compounds our pain, and we misunderstand resilience as the goal rather than the path toward a warrior's equanimity. The first step toward resilience begins when our hearts break open to life's impermanence. Impermanence cuts deepest into my heart. As a boy, I found safety in a horse chestnut tree-a sanctuary from poverty and family violence-until the day I heard the beep-beep-beep of the Parks Department payloader removing my newly cut sanctuary. "It's gone," I wept into my mother's apron, finding comfort in her "there, there" amid heartache. While heartbreak starts us on the path to equanimity, fear blocks our progress. Fearing broken skis, failed businesses, and skinned knees, we stay small-listening to our Loyal Soldier's protective warnings rather than our heart's knowing. We fear threats to love, safety, and belonging; we fear death and shame; we fear love because its object might abandon us. True grit differs fundamentally from false grit. False grit is brittle-defining strength as not feeling pain when punched. It feeds a dangerous stubbornness that can become delusion, making leaders reckless as they double down on failing patterns. True grit, by contrast, is kind and persistent. It stems from knowing oneself well enough to forgive oneself, from inquiring deeply enough to find purpose beyond personal mission statements. Equanimity means: "Everything's great, and I'm okay. Everything sucks, and I'm okay." I discovered this through radical self-inquiry and sitting with universal pain. On a vision quest in the desert, I connected with a deeper sense of self, sheltered only by thin nylon, fasting and sipping water. Through listening, I learned equanimity, captured in my poem where Grandfather Boulder teaches: "Listening opens what pain has closed. We are never healed but forever healing." Equanimity exists in the space between opposites-right and wrong, sad and happy, wishing things were different and bitter resignation. It's where we strive forward despite knowing our efforts may fail, building our companies and sand mandalas knowing winds will shift.

Chapter 10

The Art of Growing Up: Taking Your Seat

On a Brooklyn rooftop perfumed by lilac, honeysuckle, and diesel, Chad Dickerson and I shared tears and beer after his firing as Etsy's CEO. We questioned our failures, yet acknowledged our growth. I realized my job was never to save him from heartbreak but to witness the birth of his warrior spirit. Taking your seat means no longer defining yourself by what you're doing, allowing heartbreak to wash through you while the openhearted warrior emerges. Sitting with my friend Brad Feld in Colorado, we spoke of our tendency to work hard. "The difference now," he said of his fifty-something self, "is I'm no longer striving." With his seat taken, he no longer defines himself by his actions. Taking your seat leads to equanimity-it means defining your life, acknowledging regrets while seeing possibilities. What makes life complicated is our unwillingness to do the inner work-to live the examined life. When leaders fail to look inward, they turn their turmoil outward, masking anxiety with aggression. As Parker Palmer teaches, "Violence is what we do when we don't know what to do with our suffering." Leaders must be the most caring, calmest voice in the room. Like horses who choose their herd leader based on who feels the group best and cares most, not on strength or intellect. The best leaders are attuned to inner and outer needs of those they serve. We must "dive into the wreck," as Adrienne Rich wrote, to find the thing itself, not the myth. Our questions are spades to turn the muck and find our way. To reboot leadership and grow up, we must ask: How would I act if I remembered who I am? What choices would I make if I said what needed saying? Who would I become if fully heard? My purpose is to serve others in their pursuit of becoming. I've modeled myself after teachers who guide through asking rather than telling, finding power in well-asked questions that allow souls to speak. A good leader, a warrior, a grown-up takes pride in aspirations without using failure as evidence of unworthiness. My pursuit of wealth left me empty. Despite success, I couldn't quiet my Loyal Soldier's whispers that to be safe and loved, I had to deplete myself. But we can disrupt this programming. We can stand still, power down, and reboot our systems. I'll always be haunted by lemon drops, sawdust, and words' power, but from this pain, I've emerged strong. I learned that a life well written is a life well led. My legacy is knowing that becoming a good man matters more than arriving there-I've begun mastering the art of growing up.

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Key Themes in Reboot

radical self-inquiry
childhood trauma integration
emotional resilience
authentic leadership
psychological shadow work

Quotes from Reboot

The path to becoming a better leader is inseparable from the journey of becoming a more integrated human.
Radical self-inquiry forms the core of this approach.
What we don't examine in our lives impedes our happiness.
Learning to lead yourself is the hardest part of becoming a leader.

Characters in Reboot

Jerry ColonnaAuthor, executive coach, and former VC
Fred WilsonVenture capitalist and Colonna's former partner
Chad DickersonFormer CEO of Etsy and coaching client
Jerry's FatherFigure whose warnings shaped the author's fears
Jerry's MotherFigure who played Monopoly with the author

About the Author

Jerry Colonna, bestselling author of Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, is a pioneering executive coach and CEO whisperer renowned for blending Jungian therapy, Buddhist principles, and entrepreneurial insights. A former venture capitalist who co-founded Flatiron Partners and led investments at JPMorgan, Colonna now helms Reboot.io, a leadership development firm that helps executives cultivate resilience and self-awareness.

His work focuses on transforming leadership through radical self-inquiry, addressing themes of emotional healing, adult maturity, and purposeful leadership rooted in his decades of experience coaching Silicon Valley founders and Fortune 500 leaders.

Colonna’s follow-up book, Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong, expands on his framework for authentic connection in professional and personal realms. He hosts the Reboot Podcast and chairs the board of Naropa University, a leading institution in contemplative education.

A sought-after speaker featured in Forbes, The New York Times, and NPR, Colonna’s Reboot has become a New York Times bestseller and a staple in executive coaching programs worldwide.

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1M+ learners

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

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@OojasSalunke

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"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

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"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

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117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

See more on how BeFreed is discussed

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Chapter 8

Reboot

OverviewOverview of Reboot

One book. Many ways to hear it.

The Courage to Lead with Your Whole Self

The Formula: How Better Humans Make Better Leaders

See every word as you hear it

Money, Safety, and the Ghosts of Our Past

The Warrior Stance: Strong Back, Open Heart

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Standing Still in the Space Between Frames

The Irrational Other and Our Unconscious Patterns

See every word as you hear it

Finding Purpose Through Asteroid Strikes

Loving the Crow: Embracing Our Shadows

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Heartbreak and the Path to Equanimity

The Art of Growing Up: Taking Your Seat

You made it to the end of Reboot

Key Themes in Reboot

Quotes from Reboot

Characters in Reboot

About the Author

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1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

One book. Many ways to hear it.

The Courage to Lead with Your Whole Self

The Formula: How Better Humans Make Better Leaders

See every word as you hear it

Money, Safety, and the Ghosts of Our Past

The Warrior Stance: Strong Back, Open Heart

Get more out of Reboot

Standing Still in the Space Between Frames

The Irrational Other and Our Unconscious Patterns

See every word as you hear it

Finding Purpose Through Asteroid Strikes

Loving the Crow: Embracing Our Shadows

Get more out of Reboot

Heartbreak and the Path to Equanimity

The Art of Growing Up: Taking Your Seat

You made it to the end of Reboot

Users also liked

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Overview of Reboot