The Hero’s Journey to Wholeness: Ben Katt on Burnout, Belonging, and Coming Home to Yourself

Ben Katt spent a decade building something rare: a contemplative community center in Seattle rooted in belonging, service, and inner life. From the outside, it looked like purpose-driven work at its best. Beneath the surface, the same old patterns were quietly running the show — achievement, performance, the hunger for approval.

It took a single moment on a morning run and the words if you don't have your heart, you have nothing to stop him cold.

In this conversation, Brett and Ben trace the arc of Ben's life from a childhood shaped by church, brotherhood, and the need to earn love through performance, through a decade of entrepreneurial ministry, through burnout and unraveling, and into the clarity that eventually became his book, The Way Home: Discovering the Hero's Journey to Wholeness at Midlife.

They explore why high achievers often do the most soulful work while still playing the same exhausting game. Why transitions are portals, not problems. And what it actually looks like to renovate your being from the inside out not just restructure your career.

Ben is a coach, meditation teacher, author, and faculty-in-residence at the Modern Elder Academy. He's also living proof that the unknown isn't something to rush through, it's where everything changes.