I was going through a training modality, which you may know of already because I’ve talked about it before in other mediums. I was going through it, and the body worker was working on me and found a knot, and they dug in. Now, in all fairness, they asked me. said, “Hey, on a pain scale of one to ten, what is this?” I said, “Seven.” It wasn’t overly painful.
After the therapeutic practice and it was, in all ways and shapes and forms, so to speak and I can’t think of an exact word but essentially, it was something that they were trying out. It hadn’t been really proven to work but they had found it worked for other of their colleagues, as well as some of their other patients and I was willing to try it like, “Hey, I’m all in. Let’s give it a shot.” Well, I woke up the next morning and I couldn’t even move my neck. I couldn’t turn to the right and I couldn’t turn to the left and I felt like I was just super stiff and my son wanted to play and I just couldn’t really move and really wrestle with him as I normally do and usually I grab him, I spin him around and I throw him on my shoulders and we run around the house and I’ll even do squats and lunges with him and he giggles just hysterically and I just love it and I can go forever with him on there because I just love to hear him laugh.
Well, it was even uncomfortable for me to sit at my office. I have three computer screens going on any given time when I decide to work so I let creativity really flow but I couldn’t do it because I was so stiff. I was moving and turning. I thought, “Geez, this’ll go away tomorrow.” I didn’t. It took a full week for me to even get 80%. What was good about this is, I found myself starting to make mistakes. Immediately, I went to my old triggers. I started think, “Man, my neck hurts so what am I going to do? I can’t workout. I’m on a great trend right now. I’m lifting heavy. I’m losing body fat. My cardio is increasing.” All these great things. My mobility is also getting well and now here I am sidelined. I can’t progress forward. My instant reaction was to go right to my old path, my old triggers.
This happens to all of us as we’re moving forward into the author of your own story journey. What I wanted to do was reach for cookies or something, just from comfort food because I was also tired. I wasn’t sleeping well because my neck was so locked up that I couldn’t toss and turn when I sleep on my side. As a side sleeper, I couldn’t do that because I couldn’t get comfortable enough so I had to try and sleep on my back almost like a mummy. I was on my back trying to sleep, which was super uncomfortable for me, doesn’t work very well. Now I’m sleep deprived and I’m hurt and my goals have been sidelined and of course, when these things are happening, especially you’re not sleeping, the whole world seems to crash around you right?
Everything seems a little darker. No matter who you are, it does for at least an instant until you can pull yourself out of that hole. Well, then I started to realize, hey, what’s the lesson here? What’s the lesson for me? My physical body has been set back. My business has been set back because I can’t work as well and I planned on that week being a really high performing work because as you guys all know, author of your own lifestyle, I travel a lot, I spend time with my family so I set aside these work times, these work chunks, to really work on projects that I’m passionate about and so I can go out and play more often and I do it a lot. That was sidelined.
I wasn’t able to play with my son. I wasn’t able to even hold my wife because I was just so tight that I was in pain, constant pain. I just didn’t know what to do. The good part that came out of it, what is the good? Well, I realized how important mobility was to me. Now, as I get a little older, I also realize that I’m a little stiffer and recovery doesn’t happen quite as fast as I’d like to but what I also noticed was how fast I went into my old patterns and it was also interesting to see what those patterns were. Patterns change over time but they have underlying characteristics in it. For me, I immediately went to a kind of a state of dread like, “Oh no, I can’t do these things.” I wanted to worry, to stress, to anxiety. Kind of the escalation and then I wanted to comfort myself.
Where I went with comfort was food. It wasn’t like good for you food. I wanted cookies and nachos. Those are the two things that I go to right away. For some reason, growing up maybe, cookies, nachos. Those are my go-to’s. What was really interesting to notice is I wrote that down. I said, “Hey, look, let’s write down in my journal, in the area of body, what happens. What happens when something goes really wrong that is just unexpected? Like, you’re on an upward trend and you’re really hitting it hard and then something goes wrong.” Well, what I do is, I immediately get depressed, I get upset and then it goes to worry and anxiety. Stress, worry, anxiety. For me, it’s an escalation.
Okay, then what happens? Well, then I reach for comfort food which for me, is cookies and nachos. When I recognize any part of that pattern, I can pull myself out of that and see what’s good about that. The good part of that was it allowed me to focus on mobility and kind of slow myself down a little bit. I can be a little spastic and really kind of aggressively go after my goals and my ambitions in life and so allowed me to step back a little bit and then I started asking myself, “Geez, where else am I doing this? Where else in my life are these patterns coming up?” I started writing it down. When things don’t go right, whether it be mind, my body, my soul, my relationships, my business, what is my go-to and my escalation scales? Business, something’s not going right. Maybe it’s a customer’s not happy or one of my coaching clients is having something going on or one of my business partners. I had this recently happen too.
Somethings going wrong in the business, or at least from my perception, what is my escalation? It’s very similar, the way that I escalate. What is my crutch? What is my go-to crutch? Again, I just happen to turn to food. Food is just like, one of my comfort things. I go to it right away. I want cookies and nachos, sometimes it’s pizza but usually, it’s cookies and nachos. What I started to do is go through my five to thrive. This is what I’m going to encourage you to do and try this on for yourself and see if any of this resonates with you and identify, what are your trigger points? When things are going really well in your life, look back at the past, when things are going really, really well and then something happens and so you’re taken off, the seats’ taken out from under you so to speak, what happened? What happened in the past? How did you react? How did you feel? How long did it take you to get out? What did you turn to? Did you turn to drugs? Did you turn to alcohol? Did you turn to porn? Did you turn to another person or relationship and play the victim role? “Oh my gosh. My neck hurts so bad. Will everybody please feel bad for me? I can’t sleep, will you please feel bad for me?”
I’ve done that too. A newborn, I tell everybody possible, “I haven’t slept.” Get a little recognition there. Where are you going with that and then, what is your escalation scale? How does that escalate for you? Remember for me, it was depression goes to worry goes to stress goes to anxiety. That’s the way it works for me. Now, fortunately, I’ve done a lot of work on my inner game for myself and so I can recognize that really quickly. It’s kind of like, “Okay, this is what’s happening? Got it. Cool. It’s a good game.” Then I can switch it and go the route that I want to. The old me, Doug 1.0, this would have been a month-long process, maybe even more. I see that so often in my clients, that they’ve been sitting in these patterns for years if not decades and it’s holding them back. They feel like they’re working so hard, they’re trying so hard but they never quite get far enough. They never get ahead, the same place financially, same place in their body, same place in relationships, whatever category it may be and that might be you too. I don’t know. Try it on.
Write that down, your five to thrive and then where are you with each of these? I’d really love to hear it. Of course, go over to the author of your own story and share your responses. It’s a thriving community that’s growing each and every day with people just like you and I’d also encourage you to share this with at least three people. I hear back from so many of you that finally take action and do the work and share these and are having conversations that matter and it’s really uplifting in their lives or your life and I want that for the rest of you because I also hear from those of you that are scared to share this, because you don’t want people to all of a sudden know that you’re really expanding your mind, expanding who you are as a person and that’s ridiculous.
We all wear masks, so to speak, and try to put our best face forward but people are going to authentically go to enjoy the fact that you’re sharing something with them, especially if you’re bettering yourself. I mean, who doesn’t like someone who is trying to better themselves? You better yourself, then you can better your family, then it’s your community, then it’s the world and that’s what we’re after. We want to positively impact over one million people and that starts with becoming the author of your own story because when you’re doing the things that you love, when you’re living life on your terms, with your passion, everything falls into place and you start inspiring people around you so it starts by building your tribe.
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