Happiness by Design: Chris Ayotte on Building a Life Around What Matters Most

In this inspiring episode, I sit down with Chris Ayotte, former Army officer and host of The Northern Sentinels podcast, to explore what it means to live a life shaped by intentionality, priorities, and personal fulfillment.

After years of military service and multiple deployments, Chris made a life-changing decision: to step away from the Army and spend his daughter’s final two years of high school fully present at home. What followed was a transformative six-month journey of reflection, recalibration, and the creation of a new mission—this time, in civilian life.

We talk about:

• 🌱 The emotional and practical reasons behind Chris’s decision to leave the military
• 🧭 How he gave himself space to not rush into what's next—and what that taught him
• 🎧 The birth of The Northern Sentinels podcast during his transition
• 💡 The quiet, personal work of figuring out what really matters—and building around that 
• 🙌 The power of aligning career moves with what brings genuine happiness and presence

Whether you're navigating a major life shift or seeking clarity about your next step, Chris's story offers a powerful reminder:  You can pursue what’s next without leaving yourself behind. 

🔗 Resources & Links

• Listen to The Northern Sentinel podcast
• The Greater Good Substack - with Chris' podcast and writings

Transcript

Bona Normandeau: Welcome to The Happier You Podcast. I'm your host, Bona Normandeau. The Happier You is about encouraging each of us to connect with our unique self and figure out what our personal happiness looks like and build more of it into our daily lives. It's not what others think our happy should look like. It's about figuring out what really fills up our cup and brings us joy.

Each episode is about exposing you to new ideas, perspectives, and tools to help you build more happy moments in your day-to-day life. Join me and start living your best life today.

Hey, happy people. Welcome back. I am excited because today I have a special guest on the podcast. Chris Ayotte is a fellow podcaster, but he's also retired military, and we go back to our teens. I think Chris and I, we won't say how many years that is, but we go back to our teens. I'm excited to have Chris here today because.

He recently went through a very large transition, and I loved the thought process that he put into the transition that he went through. So I invited him on the podcast, my first guy on the podcast. That's another milestone for me, other than my husband who's been here for some co episodes. So welcome to The Happier You Podcast.

Chris Ayotte: Thanks, Beej. It's great to be here. Really appreciate you having me on the show. I love the reciprocal podcasting piece is really nice. 

Bona Normandeau: And I have to say that doing the podcast with you was a lot of fun and we got to reminisce about some of our university days, but now we're at the age where our kids are heading off they're leaving home and heading off to university.

And a couple of years ago, you made a very big decision in your life. To really focus on family and home. So can you just give us a little bit of background? Who's Chris? Where are you at today? And then I wanna really get into this transition that you decided to navigate a very specific way.

Chris Ayotte: So I'm a father, I'm a spouse. I'm an only child. I guess those are probably the. Fundamental pieces. How did I get here? I was born into a military family fourth generation military, which I think is probably unique for Canadians. I spent part of my youth moving between military bases, but because both of my parents were children of military families world War II vets both my grandfathers but also my grandmothers were part of the war effort in England, my mom was very adamant about.

Me only doing high school in one place. I think she was in four or five high schools in her when she was growing up. So I was fortunate to do my high school in Ottawa and then joined the military, went through the military college system, which is where we met. And after graduation and finishing my training, spent the remaining 26 years in the Canadian army doing a variety of things and.

Sort of along the way it got to a point where I made the decision and everybody either makes the decision or has a decision made for them to leave the military. 

Bona Normandeau: Oh, true. 

Chris Ayotte: I made the decision to retire after 30 years of service that included our time at military college, and that was in.

July of 2022. And I then, as you said, went through a transition started before that, which we can we'll talk about. And I've had just a wonderful last few years of transitioning out of the military spending time with family and transitioning into a new role in the private sector, which is what I'm doing now, where I work in a small professional services firm in Ottawa.

Bona Normandeau: I didn't realize it was four generations of military. That's pretty amazing. But also that decision that your mom made back in the day to have you do one high school, because obviously that was traumatic for her. Now, I think you made the same decision with your daughter because I think you actually deployed, but left your family in one spot so she could.

Maintain her high school. Is that, do I, am I remembering correctly? 

Chris Ayotte: You are. So we moved to Ottawa, which is funny because for those who don't know much about the Canadian military, a lot of times when you get in the middle and upper management, you end up in Ottawa. because this is where the headquarters is located.

But as a kid from Ottawa, I was never really in Ottawa. We breezed through here and I did some language training for about six, eight months. That's where my daughter was born. And then we were gone again off to Pua. So the fact that we enrolled in 92 and it took until 2014 until we actually landed in Ottawa.

Oh, 

Bona Normandeau: wow. 

Chris Ayotte: Yeah, it was strange. But to your, to your question, we had moved pretty extensively and as. As your kids get older right? You get a better sense of who they are as people. And it became clear that our daughter was strong in a lot of ways for moving around.

But one of the things that we could start to sense was that it would be really great if she could spend a chunk of time her high school in one spot. because she'd made some really good friends oddly in elementary school, but we could see those connections already. Forming and leaving was that much more difficult.

So we started to make those decisions to design our life around her having that stability for her last few years of school. 

Bona Normandeau: And then I think, if I remember correctly, the decision to get out of the military had a lot to do with family life as well. 

Chris Ayotte: It was the reason to leave. And as you mentioned before, I had spent a year in in the Middle East.

I. And that's when the pandemic landed. So I left home, I left the family in Ottawa in July of 2019 and spent a year in the Middle East. So there was obviously a lot of things that were happening not only on this military mission, but then this global pandemic happens. And so I got home, I went back to work in August, and very quickly, it became apparent to me that the roles that I would be filling in the future really didn't align anymore to my family's needs, to my personal needs. And I had gone in to that job. I had come back from that mission very much thinking, okay, I'll do this job for three years and then, we'll find another job in Ottawa so that I've got that ability to stay here while my daughter finishes high school.

And yeah, it was a little bit of a lightning bolt that hit me very quickly realized that, oh, these things don't line up anymore. And I, they had more or less, or they had enough where it wasn't so starkly apparent. I. Of that misalignment that, that it was fine for take the next move, take the next job.

But and I don't know if it was a combination of the mission, the pandemic a variety of other things, but there was a clear misalignment. And to me that was no longer acceptable. So something had to change. 

Bona Normandeau: What I love about this is, having been military and then as well as military spouse is, it is very easy to get caught up in the next posting and the next job.

There's always something new and challenging and you get into that mode of you just go where you expected to go next. So what I love about this story, Chris, is that you had the self-awareness to go, hold on this. This doesn't feel right anymore. And we both joined the military at the tender age of 17, 18.

And that's been your whole life since that age. So tell me how you went about that whole process to make that transition. Because it wasn't just you, right? It's you and your wife and daughter. It was a whole lifestyle change. 

Chris Ayotte: It was, and maybe I'll just pick up on something you said Beej be before that is we do get into this sort of rhythm when you're an institution and you get into this rhythm because you've been in it so long, you've abdicated certain decisions in your life.

You, you give those over to the institution, you have a lot of other decisions to make tons. It's decision overload a lot of times as a leader. But there's parts of it then that you don't have to worry about because you're told what your next job is, where you're gonna move to, et cetera, et cetera.

And unless you have this sort of, this very deliberate action to break yourself out of that you get trapped in that. And I don't think it was as starkly apparent to me. When I realized something had to change, but it became so because I spent a lot of time. I gave myself time.

I think that was, that's the big thing. So I came to the realization on a walk. It was on, I don't know if it was on New Year's Eve or, but it was a snowstorms, a pandemic. Myself and a mentor were out for a walk, came back, said to my wife I think I really need to leave the military.

We had some discussions over the holidays and then I gave myself six months, said okay. Let's just see if this makes sense. Is this that I have too much Turkey. Am I what's going on here? Are all these other factors that I've mentioned before? Is this real?

Because we all have those moments in life, right? For sure. And sometimes we act on them rashly. Other times maybe we take a bit of a breath. So I thought, this is a pretty important event, so I need to take a breath. And I gave myself a six month period to really. Figure out if this made sense.

And that was so important because it reframed how I was looking at my job. I reframed how I was looking at professional relationships in the institution because I was now in that first stages of pulling back those decisions, of taking greater agency of my life. So as I looked around for sort of six months and I experienced things in a different way, I went, yep.

Okay. This is the right decision for me. I am, I'm clear about this is where I need to go personally and where we need to go as a family. And the main reason we said about family, but the main reason was the number of hours had to put into the jobs at those levels that myself and colleagues were doing.

Now we're so significant that I would not be around in any material way to spend time with my daughter before she left home. And she was pretty clear, even early high school, that she wanted to go and do university somewhere else. So having been away for a year having a certain burn rate in these jobs, I just went, yeah, this isn't gonna work.

And I'm not gonna look back and this great advice I got as a young leader from a master corporal named John Dugas who came by my office when I was a lieutenant, a second lieutenant and busily at whatever hour working on something that was probably pretty meaningless. And John said to me, Hey, sir, what are you doing?

I said, oh, I just gotta get this done, master corporal, and this done. He goes, okay. He said, Hey sir, just remember no one's last words in life have ever been. I wish I'd worked more. So that's been my sort of thing that I've always used as a bit of a vector check of going, what would John Dugas say? 

Bona Normandeau: Yeah. 

Chris Ayotte: And that was it. And I went. I'm not gonna look back and say, oh, thank goodness I, did that much more time in the headquarters. I'm gonna look back and say, thank goodness I retired from the military and had the ability to spend grade 11 and grade 12 with my daughter. That's the thing that's gonna be the most meaningful.

And without question, it has been, it's been, those are probably the two best years of my life so far. 

Bona Normandeau: That's awesome. I have goosebumps when you said that. Just because I'm in that stage now and because I always pick your brain about, okay, what's next? What's next? What should I prepare for? I love Chris, that you said taking agency over your life, because I know for me, that's when I suddenly realized that having been military, I was trained to just do whatever was next.

And I did I didn't make certain decisions in my life. I didn't worry about it. And I love that you just took six months and said, okay. What do I really want? Like you just did some self-reflection and discussed with your family. I'm assuming your wife and your daughter were in on the discussions as well, but, and those last two years of high school I have found are so precious because they're so busy that we really only get really small pockets with these amazing future adults.

So just something beautiful to prioritize and make space for. So that. You are there when she's around and not the other way, right? We're just so used to our kids fitting into our life, but really switching roles and saying, okay, how can I soak up as much of those last two years that you've got at home as a family of three, 90% of the time we're, when they live with us.

'cause hopefully we'll get some summers while they'll come home and visit us. But that really struck me is that you, you made the decision to. To make the decision to take some time and say, this is what I think I wanna do but ponder it. So does John Dugas still know that he is inside your head?

Chris Ayotte: I saw him at a reunion for the first military unit that I served in a couple of summers ago and actually got a chance to spend some time with him. And I did, I. I've told him that I've quoted him endlessly over the years. He lives outside of Edmonton now and actually trains, canines for service, dogs for police, tactical units, things like that.

But yeah, just sage wisdom. Yeah. And the sort of thing that and I think a lot of people. A lot of people don't appreciate the impact that mentoring and coaching can have on people in those formative years. And I certainly credit a lot of NCOs, non-commissioned officers corporals, master corporal sergeants for giving me those, those pieces of wisdom, whether it be directly like that.

Or setting examples. Showing me what professionalism looks like, showing me what dedication and service looks like. And I dare say that if I had not been given so many great examples when I was young, in that first job, things would've evolved differently. 

Bona Normandeau: We have that in common.

I love to remember those people who really touched my life and said something impactful that I've held onto for years and years. But I also think that the gift that you've given your daughter, like what you, what that spoke to her saying. Prioritizing those last two years with her and Kathy as well.

Like just really being that family unit for the past couple of years. But then I would be remiss if I didn't talk about, how did the podcast come into this whole transition? So you made this decision to leave the military? Yeah. To be around home more and you said, just even transitioning outta the military, that's its own podcast, I think.

How did you end up where you are now? So you, you made the decision. Stay home and enjoy those two years. And then what else came out of this journey for you? 

Chris Ayotte: I like what you said about about how valuable those two, those years are in high school and I didn't. I didn't impose myself on my daughter's life.

I very much just wanted to be available and be present. So drop her off at school, pick her up from school, be that annoying parent that goes to all the events. Those sorts of things. Now, clearly that's not gonna fill a day. 

So there's a few other things. I incorporated about a year or so before I retired so that I could take on some contracts and I got to work with some really cool companies, which was fun.

But again, I found myself with a little bit of. Extra time in the calendar. And one of the things that when I left service that it wasn't a driver, but it was certainly one of those things that I looked at and went, this isn't right. But this doesn't make any sense. And it's interesting because we have a lot of discussion these days about what's going on with our commitments to nato.

And I won't drag it down this road, but certainly. National security and national defense are far more in the discussion these days than I can remember being in my lifetime, outside perhaps of when we were in Afghanistan. And what I, when I was in my last job in the military, I just happened to be in, in a role that dealt with defense procurement.

And I was in these rooms and listening to how things were being spoken about and the processes were being used and what became. Plain to me was that there was this sort of famous, say, do gap where things were publicly being said. But privately I was not seeing the decisions being made that were allowing us to get to those levels of ambitions that were being articulated by elected officials.

Which is not surprising. This happens all the time, right? Elected officials have a lot on their plate. They have a lot of priorities they have to manage, and typically, unless it is something that's gonna get them elected or reelected, or something that is at the core of the political party of which they're a part of, it's not gonna get to the level where they actually give it attention.

And I said, okay, so if that's really about educating Canadians about these issues, then how do you do that? I thought there's some great offerings out there podcasts and everything else, but it's really dense, right? Unless you're actually inside that, that particular organization or you've been working on that particular area of interest for years, I.

It's gonna be boring to you, right? It's kinda like watching a, a YouTube video and the in intricacies of some fixing something on a car and you're like, I just wanna watch Top gear. 

Yeah. And 'cause Top Gear is about storytelling and it's about, personalities.

It's, cars are secondary to it. And I thought, okay that's a, that's the way I would like to go. It's like, all right, so let's educate through storytelling. Let's inspire through storytelling. And as I started to. Build out the concept for the podcast. It grew to be more than just defense and security and things like this.

It grew into this idea of service and citizenship and looking for Canadians who. Were doing things that were bigger than themselves that had found a way to, to give back, and that became quite com compelling. And there's a quote from a former Indian Prime Minister in Dear Gandhi that I use on my substack and I've quoted before that, people tend to forget their duties but they remember their rights.

And we're fortunate to live in Canada without a doubt. But I, if people think, if the citizens think that it's just gonna endure like this forever without ha us having to serve, to invest in the country, to give back, to find a way to, to make this place better we're kidding ourselves. It's not going to.

So that's how it all evolved is, and then it was just a case of finding awesome people like you who have found ways to serve and sitting down and hearing their stories. 

Bona Normandeau: And I will just say for anybody who hasn't heard your podcast, first of all, I still don't know how I made the roster, but super honored that I did.

But really. You're an amazing storyteller. Through your interviews you took me on a journey of discovery of things that I hadn't thought about in a long time. It was very fun and I really enjoy that about the other people that you bring on. So some of the people you've brought on have been game changers in Canadian politics or the military, like they're people that, for me, they're from afar and yet you brought them in and showed the human behind them.

The story behind the person kind of thing and some of the decisions that they've made. And I think that's, I think that's so powerful and I love that you were able to make this transition yourself, but also find this passion inside of you to tie I. Your military service and thank you for your service 30 years, and tie that into continuing to serve the Canadian public with a bigger picture, like you say, like the people that you have on your podcast that are doing something bigger than themselves.

So I think that's amazing that you've tied that in, and yet you're not retired eating bond bonds all day. And now that you're empty nesters, you're still working, you're still making a difference in the world. But this podcast is your. Creative process on the side. Did I nail that okay or?

Chris Ayotte: Yeah, absolutely. I never thought of myself as a particularly creative person. My degree is, I'm an engineering degree, a terrible engineer, worse marks in the class, but I still got an engineering degree. So maybe that's more about stubbornness and hard work than it is about intellect. I am stereotypical in certain ways of that, of a, an engineer of being in the military, these sorts of things.

And I've never. I don't never really thought of myself as overly creative. Maybe as a junior officer, there's this latitude to be more creative to solve problems, but I found as I got more senior, you get into this bureaucratic construct that really constrains your ability to be creative and solve problems in unique ways.

So perhaps I was just craving something when I left, and this is just how it manifested. I'm not sure, the other thing too, I think about the podcast is spending more time with my daughter, looking at her future, looking at the future of her friends. Nothing's guaranteed and I think service is a really important way that we can continue to invest in our nation for the, for future Canadians, for our children, and.

I actually used that sort of investment analogy when I was giving a Remembrance Day brief to General Motors Canada because it, it's a little bit esoteric when you're talking about service and citizenship to people who maybe haven't served in a more overt way. But I, but you look at it this way.

What we have right now is we're living off the dividends of people who have served before us. And service takes many forms as be whatever that is. So whether that's community, volunteers, all the way up to military service, everything in between counts. Everything in between is an investment and we're living off the inve, the dividends of those investments.

Just like any investment if you don't keep adding to it, it's gonna run out eventually. So we can enjoy those dividends, but at the same time, we need to find ways as citizens to invest back in the country so that our children and our children's children have the opportunity to enjoy those dividends as well.

So this is not something that is just going to be as bottomless this bottomless pit that can be drawn from, it needs to be invested in and again, that's another sort of reason why I think the podcast and a whole bunch of other parts of my life have coalesced around this idea of service and citizenship.

Bona Normandeau: I. I love it. So well said Chris. I really yeah I love the investment scenario that works with my brain completely. We do need to keep investing in being Canadian and being Canada inside and outside of our country. That's awesome. So anybody who wants to check out your podcast where's the best place to send them, Chris?

Chris Ayotte: I would love, so I've got everything on Substack now, which I know is not something that everybody uses or some people aren't even aware of it. But I started off using a another platform and I really wanted a place, again, the back to this idea of agency and a little bit of control where I could put all of my content, 'cause it's the podcast, but I also write about certain things that are important to me.

So I wanted a single place, so I started a substack called The Greater Good, which is where I put all of my content on. Now it publishes on there, the podcast, but it also then goes out to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And YouTube now has audio podcasts on there. So it goes out to all the major ones, the Northern Sentinels podcast.

And it's hard to miss the logos designed by my daughter. Yeah. So that's where you can find the content. The Greater Good is a free subscription, and you get notified whenever a new podcast short comes out, or a piece of writing comes out, and that's a great way to, to support the creation.

And none of it's monetized. It's all a hobby, and it's all about another way to serve. And I try to support veteran and first responders companies as well with free advertising. And we just did a, we, me just did a big remembrance day push throughout November, highlighting a bunch of veterans and their different their different services and sacrifices.

So those are some of the ways that you can get connected with the content that I'm putting out there. 

Bona Normandeau: The Substack. I had never been there before. It was a little intimidating at first, but I will put a link both to the podcast and the Substack because I know both my husband and I have really enjoyed your writing as well as your podcast.

So particularly there's a transition blog, for lack of a better term in there that we both enjoyed reading. So Chris, I totally forgot. I always ask my guests. To have a quote. Now, I know you've used two good quotes today. Do you wanna use one of those or do you have another one handy that you love? 

Chris Ayotte: Not an inspiring one, but it's one that my daughter actually ended up putting into her year yearbook, which is never do math in public.

So that probably hearkens back to my grades in engineering. And a variety of other things in my life. But yeah, never do math in public. 

Bona Normandeau: That is a excellent life advice, I have to say. That's brilliant. Awesome. Chris, thank you for coming on. The Happier You, but also just thank you for sharing your heart and your mission well, and for me, your friendship and mentorship with launching successfully launching our young adults.

So thank you again for coming on This's. Awesome. 

Chris Ayotte: Thank you. B, it's been wonderful to reconnect and and the work you're doing with the happier you is amazing. And this has this has been awesome. Thanks so much. 

Bona Normandeau: Thanks Chris. That's it for today. Remember, when you have a choice, choose happy.

Have a good one. Go get your happy on.