Choosing Peru over a lucrative job

Mark McCartney is an Irish-born coach, host of the acclaimed What Is a Good Life podcast with nearly 300 conversations, and facilitator who helps leadership teams move from performative to genuine authenticity through presence, silence, and radical honesty.

3:00 Mark describes his early career in corporate banking and capital markets in Ireland and Canada, passing the CFA Level I but realizing finance wasn't his calling: "If I do the next versions of this, I just haven't had a better idea yet as to what I want to do with my life."

5:00 The New York Stock Exchange bell-ringing moment—what looked like a career peak became the catalyst for leaving finance. "I felt like a bit of an imposter where people really seemed to love their work."

7:00 Mark's sabbatical to India—meditation, ashrams, Vipassana—and the surprise of meeting his future wife in McLeod Ganj, proposing within five weeks. Ten years later, the story holds.

10:00 Turning down a 40% pay increase after a body-scan meditation revealed total clarity. His wife's response: "Yeah, I know you can't. It's fine." They sell everything and leave for Peru's Sacred Valley.

15:00 Patterns from 300+ interviews on "What is a good life?"—the deeply individual nature of the answer, the importance of presence, and how people who say they're living a good life have often endured divorce, addiction, or depression.

20:00 Authenticity as inner and outer coherence—not sharing everything, but no longer saying things your heart doesn't believe to be true. Tom Morgan reference: "When I said something that my heart didn't believe to be true, it hurt."

25:00 Silent conversations explained—groups sit in silence for 10-45 minutes before speaking. Vulnerability isn't sharing your biggest trauma; it's sharing what's alive in this moment.

32:00 Leadership teams moving from performative to genuine—creating conditions where defenses lower, elephants get named, and "I don't trust you right now" becomes a conversation starter, not a threat.

39:00 Intellectual understanding as a "consolation prize"—the difference between reading Eckhart Tolle and embodying the teaching. "The lived experience of our life equates more to wisdom than sharing intellectual ideas."

47:00 Belonging through attention—how a Peruvian woman's daily eye contact gave Mark a sense of home, and why belonging is built through tending to the people around you, not nationality.

51:00 Transactional vs. relational living—Bogumil's infinite game tennis analogy and Mark's insight on the psychic toll of pretending something is important when it isn't.

59:00 Mark's definition of success: spending days doing something you care about, being with people you love, and having the financial foundation to support it. "It feels like I've created the foundation for something that I hope to enjoy for many more years in this life."

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