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Confessions of a Problem Seeker: My Lifetime Journey From Busy Brain To Loving Heart
Confessions of a Problem Seeker is a raw and unflinchingly honest memoir of one man's midlife reckoning and search to find his soul. As a childhood shaped by trauma and illness gave way to an illusion of adult success and purpose—marriage, fatherhood, entrepreneurial achievement—the author finds himself grappling with the unshakable feeling that he has lived a life shaped more by fear and survival instincts than by inner truth. Triggered by divorce, professional loss, and a deep inner emptiness, his search for peace leads him to psychedelics and a spiritual awakening as he begins to heal old wounds, including the lingering shadows of his Holocaust-survivor parents. He offers a compassionate invitation for others—particularly those in the second half of life—to question who they really are beneath their busy identities and to reclaim the joy and stillness of an authentic, present life.
254 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 13, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 2, 2026
An Imaginary Conversation with My Friend Howard Steinberg, the Problem Seeker
As I sit to write these lines about Howard’s book, I picture myself telling him this in person, sitting at a coffee shop in the Queens of his formative years or the Manhattan where he now lives. This is how it played out in my head.
I didn’t read Confessions of a Problem Seeker at a distance. I read it as someone who also lives with diabetes, and who recognizes how much our need for control, and our discomfort with uncertainty, ends up living in the body.
What stayed with me is how closely your relationship with diabetes tracks your evolution as a person. Early on, diabetes shows up as something to manage tightly. Measure carefully. Stay ahead of. There’s a lot of intelligence and discipline there, but also tension. That sense that if you loosen your grip, something will go wrong. As an engineer by training, I approached diabetes for many years the same way: as something that could be engineered into control.
Professionally, that stance plays out in familiar ways. At Pepsi, you’re inside a system built for predictability while being pulled toward questions it has no patience for. As an entrepreneur, that same instinct fuels creativity and risk-taking, but it also brings stress, isolation, and wear. During your time at dLife, when I first met you nearly fifteen years ago, that tension was especially visible. The mission deeply mattered to you. This made the environment turbulent and the emotional load all too real.
That same posture shows up in your family relationships. As the son of two older parents, 42 and 44 when they had me, I could relate to many of your experiences. The way you write about your parents carries both care and responsibility, as well as pressure. A feeling of needing to hold things together. To not be the one who drops the ball.
That dynamic shows up in your marriage, too. Early on, the same forward drive and need for control shape how you show up as a partner. As your relationship to work and uncertainty evolves, so does your relationship to intimacy, presence, and vulnerability. I appreciated how honestly you sit with the fact that growth in one area of life often forces renegotiation in others.
What shifts in the later chapters isn’t the disappearance of problems, but a change in posture. You become more willing to experiment with different ways of relating to uncertainty itself. Meditation. Stillness. Even psychedelics. Not as fixes, and not as escapes, but as ways of loosening a lifelong grip on control.
Seen this way, diabetes stops being something to dominate and becomes a daily practice in attention. Listening. Adjusting. Accepting that presence often matters more than precision. That evolution resonated with me deeply. Diabetes has a way of asking the same question over and over. Do you try to out-control the system, or do you learn how to live inside it?
This isn’t a book about abandoning discipline. It’s about what happens when discipline is paired with curiosity. At work. In relationships. In the body.
If we were actually sitting there with our coffee cooling between us, that’s probably how I’d put it. This book isn’t trying to impress anyone. It’s the record of someone learning, sometimes the hard way, how to loosen his grip and live more honestly with an ongoing problem.
As I sit to write these lines about Howard’s book, I picture myself telling him this in person, sitting at a coffee shop in the Queens of his formative years or the Manhattan where he now lives. This is how it played out in my head.
I didn’t read Confessions of a Problem Seeker at a distance. I read it as someone who also lives with diabetes, and who recognizes how much our need for control, and our discomfort with uncertainty, ends up living in the body.
What stayed with me is how closely your relationship with diabetes tracks your evolution as a person. Early on, diabetes shows up as something to manage tightly. Measure carefully. Stay ahead of. There’s a lot of intelligence and discipline there, but also tension. That sense that if you loosen your grip, something will go wrong. As an engineer by training, I approached diabetes for many years the same way: as something that could be engineered into control.
Professionally, that stance plays out in familiar ways. At Pepsi, you’re inside a system built for predictability while being pulled toward questions it has no patience for. As an entrepreneur, that same instinct fuels creativity and risk-taking, but it also brings stress, isolation, and wear. During your time at dLife, when I first met you nearly fifteen years ago, that tension was especially visible. The mission deeply mattered to you. This made the environment turbulent and the emotional load all too real.
That same posture shows up in your family relationships. As the son of two older parents, 42 and 44 when they had me, I could relate to many of your experiences. The way you write about your parents carries both care and responsibility, as well as pressure. A feeling of needing to hold things together. To not be the one who drops the ball.
That dynamic shows up in your marriage, too. Early on, the same forward drive and need for control shape how you show up as a partner. As your relationship to work and uncertainty evolves, so does your relationship to intimacy, presence, and vulnerability. I appreciated how honestly you sit with the fact that growth in one area of life often forces renegotiation in others.
What shifts in the later chapters isn’t the disappearance of problems, but a change in posture. You become more willing to experiment with different ways of relating to uncertainty itself. Meditation. Stillness. Even psychedelics. Not as fixes, and not as escapes, but as ways of loosening a lifelong grip on control.
Seen this way, diabetes stops being something to dominate and becomes a daily practice in attention. Listening. Adjusting. Accepting that presence often matters more than precision. That evolution resonated with me deeply. Diabetes has a way of asking the same question over and over. Do you try to out-control the system, or do you learn how to live inside it?
This isn’t a book about abandoning discipline. It’s about what happens when discipline is paired with curiosity. At work. In relationships. In the body.
If we were actually sitting there with our coffee cooling between us, that’s probably how I’d put it. This book isn’t trying to impress anyone. It’s the record of someone learning, sometimes the hard way, how to loosen his grip and live more honestly with an ongoing problem.
February 4, 2026
The Review
This was an insightful and engaging read. The author’s honesty and ability to embrace past events not only becomes the cornerstone of the book, but elevates the reading experience entirely. The balance the author found in personal storytelling about their life with the lessons and experiences that became the foundation of their outlook on life and the blueprints that would develop in this book as a result was astonishing, and the way the author brought authenticity to the discussion surrounding diabetes and living with chronic illness from a young age was something so many readers will be able to relate to.
What stood out was the author’s ability to confront the trauma of his past and touch upon the way those traumas impacted his identity over time. For many people, they find themselves living a life inauthentic to who they are due to one reason or another, be it family pressure or self-sabotage or some sort of trauma impacting their life. The impacts of the author’s parents surviving the horrors of the Holocaust and the expectations he had put upon him and he put upon himself led to the choices he made early in life, but through challenging those choices later in life the author shows how anyone can make changes for the better and find an inner peace and a connection to that missing identity that they lost so long ago.
The Verdict
Honest, compelling, and engaging, author Howard Steinberg’s “Confessions of a Problem Seeker” is a wholly unique and enthralling nonfiction memoir meets inspiration story and a must-read book. The balance the author found in personal storytelling and motivational insight was superb, and the heartfelt, almost conversational style of writing allowed readers to connect to the author’s story in a meaningful way.
This was an insightful and engaging read. The author’s honesty and ability to embrace past events not only becomes the cornerstone of the book, but elevates the reading experience entirely. The balance the author found in personal storytelling about their life with the lessons and experiences that became the foundation of their outlook on life and the blueprints that would develop in this book as a result was astonishing, and the way the author brought authenticity to the discussion surrounding diabetes and living with chronic illness from a young age was something so many readers will be able to relate to.
What stood out was the author’s ability to confront the trauma of his past and touch upon the way those traumas impacted his identity over time. For many people, they find themselves living a life inauthentic to who they are due to one reason or another, be it family pressure or self-sabotage or some sort of trauma impacting their life. The impacts of the author’s parents surviving the horrors of the Holocaust and the expectations he had put upon him and he put upon himself led to the choices he made early in life, but through challenging those choices later in life the author shows how anyone can make changes for the better and find an inner peace and a connection to that missing identity that they lost so long ago.
The Verdict
Honest, compelling, and engaging, author Howard Steinberg’s “Confessions of a Problem Seeker” is a wholly unique and enthralling nonfiction memoir meets inspiration story and a must-read book. The balance the author found in personal storytelling and motivational insight was superb, and the heartfelt, almost conversational style of writing allowed readers to connect to the author’s story in a meaningful way.
February 4, 2026
I found "Confessions of a Problem Seeker" to be deeply moving and courageous…Howard skillfully weaves a memoir that is both colorfully idiosyncratic and highly relatable, no small feat. Raw, funny, and always full of heart, "Confessions" is a thought-provoking psychological journey that unearths major insights and never pretends to be neatly tied up…Worth your time!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews