Meet Charly Jaffe of Turning Crisis Into Success in La Jolla

For my Israeli friends, sprinting to bomb shelters was a regular part of life, while the peers I’d never met in Gaza had no shelters to run to. I wanted to be a part of something significant, to make a positive impact on something that really mattered. So I set my sights on becoming a peace negotiator.

After spending a year in Israel volunteering as an EMT and an English teacher, I enrolled at Georgetown University where I studied Arabic alongside Hebrew and took classes with giants of diplomacy I’d long idolized. Then life threw me a bit of a curveball. Or more accurately, a tackle.

I snapped my femur in our final rugby game of the season and developed a pulmonary fat embolism –which basically means my body began suffocating itself without any treatment to stop it. Ten horrifying days later, the physical danger was gone, but I was completely unprepared for the mental minefield that lay ahead. I was completely unfamiliar with the world of mental health, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) felt like a full-scale insurgency in my mind. My diplomat ambitions fell to the wayside and I spent most of college high-achieving in high distress, struggling to keep up appearances while managing a medley of intense mental and physical challenges. I felt lost.

After college, I started out at BBC News wanting to explore the power of story and worked at Google for a few years to get a deeper understanding of business. But the waves of anxiety and depression never dissipated for long, and eventually, I hit a breaking point. Leaving Google behind to go backpacking through Southeast Asia, I studied yoga and spirituality, lived with a family in the Sabahan jungle and volunteered in a Burmese Buddhist nunnery. Eventually, I landed in Australia running a Tantric yoga school with a dear friend and incredible teacher Emma Power.

This birthed the type of life transformation I hadn’t thought to dream of. While all the medical experts had said I’d need levodopa (Parkinson’s medication) for the rest of my life to manage a neurological disorder I developed in college, I was able to stop taking it and keep normal muscles function. My mind had more space; emotions were less grabbing. Darkness wasn’t magically banished from my life, but as I renegotiated my terms with it, I stopped feeling anxious or judgmental about challenging feelings, and they began bringing beautiful insights with them.

Pain bloomed into power. There was so much privilege in being able to take the time and space away, and honestly, I felt a bit guilty. So I decided to turn that guilt into responsibility. I began having the conversations I needed to hear, writing and speaking openly on all the things I’d once held the most shame about experiencing mental illness, sexual assault, and being bisexual (to name a few).

My experiences may not be universal, but we all experience fear, shame, love, and pain. The key to enjoying life isn’t avoiding uncomfortable emotions and experiences; it’s changing our relationship with them. I never really left the world of conflict transformation. Now I just begin with the world inside our heads.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Haha, oy how much time do we have?! But in all seriousness, I look at all of my challenges as teachers. Some are more ruthless than others, but to me, being able to learn and grow from the most horrible of obstacles in front of me isn’t just a positive outlook, it’s a power move. I know what it’s like to lose my health, my dignity, my mind, even my desire to live.

For a long time, I resented each and every one of these experiences. I didn’t realize I was still running from them. There are endless ways we avoid pain: we run, numb, obsess, project. Maybe you’re an overachiever (like me) and indulge in a variety pack. But the funny thing is, the ways we avoid pain often cause more suffering than the things we’re running from. These are all just forms of armor we wear to ward off vulnerability.

But true power doesn’t come from fighting it off. It’s found in the ability to put down our weapons of self-protection, and allow ourselves to experience our emotions in all their uncomfortable glory. So that’s what I did. And I had no idea the incredible teachers that would be waiting for me.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
I guide people through the places we often run from, helping them uncover the treasures that come with it. This takes many forms, and as a result of my speaking, writing and 1:1 sessions, people gain clarity, turn pain into power and use their obstacles as springboards. I have the incredible privilege of serving as a crisis counselor, supporting diverse folks from around the country reaching out in their most harrowing moments. I’m taking a brief break from the California sunshine to study psychology, spirituality and education at Columbia University’s Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology.

I’m also over the moon to be releasing my first book, co-authored with my wonderful father, Richard, coming out in January. Writing this book, exploring each other’s psyches and bringing my dad’s story to life has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. While my dad’s achievements as an entrepreneur are often the first things people notice, he credits his inner world as the key to his outer success.

Our book, Turning Crisis Into Success: A serial entrepreneur’s lessons on overcoming challenges while keeping your sh*t together, lays out ways of thinking and being that fueled both his happiness and success, and teaches these lessons through telling his story. We take you inside his thoughts and emotions throughout the process of starting, building, taking public and selling two businesses to Fortune 100 companies.

The most beautiful piece of our project was realizing that the things that helped him soar were the same things that allowed me to rebuild and transform. Now my mission is to pay it forward, and empower others to make their challenges bloom.