In Those Moments When You Are Paralyzed By Fear
[Music]
[Applause]
so
i used to love waking up
in the morning to the sunrise in my face
in 2010 i lived in this condo where
the large bedroom windows at my feet
face due east
into the morning sunrise it would awaken
me
into this grateful state of having a new
day
but not this particular morning
i would wake up see the sun rise
and instead of grateful i felt dread
in the idea of another day in this
new world of pain and suffering
this wasn’t supposed to be my life
i had spent too much time and intention
crafting a life worth living for this
to be the result
i thought i had done everything right i
left my comfortable corporate career
path
and then i took up a low-paying contract
position
with a successful real estate investor
looking at that like my real world mba
and then i struck out on my own found a
mentor
who had been in real estate longer than
i’ve even been alive
and i started on my own and i raised a
fund
of just over a million dollars in under
eight months
to begin investing in real estate
projects
nationwide i had this
ambitious goal to create financial
freedom
for the family that i was so looking
forward to create
next
instead the great recession of 2008
had squashed my plans instead of
building
i found myself barely holding it
together trying to weather that
financial storm
i would tell myself the same investors
song and dance
that sometimes markets take a dip
we can’t control that investments will
sometimes take
longer than expected to pay out
but real estate always holds its value
and we just need to hold on another
month
and another month came and another month
i kept telling myself the same song at
dance
but then i had to start telling my
investors
and then i started living on credit
cards
i was getting scared growing up
a lash key kid to a single working mom
it wasn’t in my blood to do something
like this on this scale
training perceived job security for
risky entrepreneurialism
my awakening in those days
was to a gut-wrenching pain of fear
anxiety
and bewilderment i was especially afraid
to fail the friends and family who
believed in
and then invested with me like most of
us
i didn’t understand the magnitude of the
economic
bubble that was bursting at that time
in the moment i was just paralyzed
by fear
have you ever had the moment where you
didn’t know what to do
where the damage has already been done
and
any next move could be the wrong move
making it even worse
and the fear of that whole situation
just leaves you stuck
in place in psychology
there is a polyvagal theory that
in summary introduces a third option
in the fight or flight scenario which is
to simply freeze or let’s call it
surrender if just for the moment
think of a gazelle caught by a lion
if caught the gazelle will often
play dead while being carried back to
the lion cubs
looking for any opportune moment to make
a move
and get out of there there is an
evolutionary advantage in surrendering
because for the gazelle to thrash about
in the
jaws of the lion will only cause further
hurt and trauma it gives itself a chance
at living another day
because it simply surrendered
in my situation i
froze but it wasn’t out of an ex you
know
an evolutionary surrender it was out of
an existential panic
i was creating more suffering
on top of the suffering generated by the
external thing
and eventually i got to this point where
i had to make
a move any move i just gave myself a
chore to do
to get out of the damn house i just went
to starbucks
i journaled about my situation it put me
around other people who
had their own lives in motion and were
oblivious to my little
existential panic and that
helped me surrender a little bit
and i had this thought stream that
that sun’s gonna rise and it’s gonna set
and it’s gonna do its thing regardless
of whether i sit here in my little
victim bucket of despair
and it’s going to do its thing over
billions of other people
the majority of whom have far greater
and more fundamental problems
than i have and that helped me surrender
a little bit more and take a bigger step
i surrendered to the idea that the
to the truth that the business and
investments were really lost
and i started the bankruptcy process
i felt like an incredible failure
i punished myself for a good chunk of my
30s
falling back and tripping into
uh the fear that just anything
the next thing that i put my name on
that i committed to would also just
blow up in my face
i had to separate my self-worth from the
business failure and realize that
i wasn’t i didn’t hadn’t done anything
intentionally wrong
i didn’t swindle my friends and family
out of their money and then go
spend it on fast cars and yacht
vacations
money went to investments in the
paperwork
there’s a chapter or a section called
risks
and in there is unforeseen economic
circumstances and acts of god and as we
all know
that’s exactly where we were at that
point in time
at the heart of it were these subprime
mortgage-backed securities and default
credit swaps that
tanked the global economy
and it was perpetrated by the
institutions that were supposed to be
safeguarding and driving that
reliability in the real estate market
right
but we all know that’s not what happened
there’s this saying right that goes the
tsunami
tide sinks all ships something like that
either way maybe it’s the opposite but
either way my little paddle boat was
no contest
after those five years of punished
myself i finally just had to
let it go and it was january 15 by that
point
i was turning 38 i had this voice in my
head that just said
you are running out of time
so buddy and i went
camping and hiking and getting a little
wet down the california coast
i used that time to reset and i just set
out three
simple goals grow my business
walk my dog in the morning and focus on
triathlon training
these three simple goals kept me
narrowly focused on
creating wins to just build momentum
again
and indeed they did
this process for digging out from
insurmountable challenge is my ideal
worth sharing
three steps the first
is to just surrender
give yourself permission to just be in
it for a while
be okay with being the gazelle in the
jaws of pain
anxiety or fear recognize
you’re human you’re living a life
and this is the true inevitable right
and the inalienable right we have
resisting both the event and the
feelings that come with it
are futile waste of energy
when ready to be done just exhale and
let it all go
that part you might have to do a few
times i did
second find what you can be grateful for
if you have trouble finding what you can
be grateful for start with those
simple things that we take for granted
it could be
a fresh mountain air it could be that
cup of morning coffee
it could be toilet paper next to the
toilet
in my goals my walking my dog in the
morning was an act of gratitude
and i literally thought to myself i get
to
walk up a hill the long and steep one
in san francisco where i lived at the
time to this
hilltop parklet where i watched the
sunrise over the city before everyone
was awake and making noise
every day gratitude has this
phenomenal way of getting us outside of
ourselves
regardless of the state that we might be
in
third is to figure out one step to take
forward
for me in that past situation it was
just to get
out of the damn house go to starbucks
and when you’ve completed that task be
sure to give yourself kudos
click your own like button and activate
your own dopamine
and then figure out the next step
and the next step eventually
you’ll look up and see progress you’ve
made towards taking bigger
and bigger steps i have a great example
of this in my triathlon training where
i began the year barely surviving 20
mile rides
to loving 50 mile rides
to completing a sprint distance
triathlon to then going on to a middle
distance
olympic race and then setting my sights
like a crazy person on a half
ironman race where you swim 1.2 miles
and then bike 56 miles and then do a
half marathon 13.1 miles
all in one race what you may find in
this process
what i found in this process is that we
can build up a
arsenal of mental aikido moves to
sidestep
and not waste time on the pain and
anxiety that come around
come with the next round of adversity
as we we have discovered even in this
last year
the true inalienable right we have is to
change
and challenge and if you don’t have
a toolbox of tools to use and
cope you’re just setting yourself up
for a world of hurt
i had mentioned that in 2015 i was
going on to that half ironman race
well the weekend before the race on our
last training ride
in the best shape of my life
exactly 20 minutes after this very
picture was taken
i lost control on my bike i was on an
infamous section of lucas valley road in
marin
north of san francisco locals there know
it very very well
i was going too fast into a downhill
curve and i lost control of my bike i
went over the side of the hill
and i fell 20 feet landing flat on my
back
the impact
broke my left collarbone cracked most my
ribs on my left side
collapsed my left lung and burst
my l1 vertebrae
after a six hour surgery the next day
putting my spine back together i woke up
my awakening in the icu bed
was to a beautiful panoramic view of the
marin
foothills including
the one that literally broke
my back unable to
turn away or sit up
and pull the curtain i had to watch that
sunrise
and sunset over that hill
except this time i knew there was
nothing for me
and laying there mentally paralyzed by
fear
i had already wasted a good chunk of my
life i wasn’t gonna waste
another five years so instead of
laying there mentally paralyzed by fear
i thought
why would i stack mental paralysis
on top of the physical paralysis that i
now
get to enjoy
no i knew that that someone rise and
that someone said
it wouldn’t care about my
situation whether it be economic
collapse
burst vertebrae or toilet paper reserves
i was surrounded by an amazing tribe of
friends and family who brought me almond
milk lattes in the morning
and milkshakes whenever i needed a boost
and i had an amazing team of doctors and
nurses and physical therapists who never
let me succumb to the pain
i had a brain that was still producing
thoughts hopes and dreams
i was still breathing despite the
collapsed lung
so i set out and
i remember actually the day before the
race
actually the day of the race my friends
took sharpies to their arms and they
tattooed themselves
and they made signs dedicating the race
to me and they sent me text messages
all day during the race and it was
awesome and
it pissed me off
that i couldn’t be there actually
and it made me vow
to race again within a year
i had already lived through my worst
nightmare i had
my mental aikido moves
and so i got to work and that next year
i didn’t do just one i did three sprint
triathlons
the year after that i rode that hill i
crashed on in a hand cycle
and i do it every year and i’ve done it
almost every year
since year after that i did the la
marathon in a racing wheelchair
and i crossed the finish line at
my first half iron man in oceanside
near san diego
i also that year i met a woman
the year after that we fell in love we
bought a house we went to another half
iron man in lubbock texas where
i qualified for the half ironman world
championships
in nice france which we traveled to
and i raced later that year
i continue to train despite this
pandemic
my next race will be a full distance
ironman triathlon
hopefully this year
now let me be the first to tell you
i’m no world-class triathlete i’m not
breaking any lance breed records
i’ve actually failed at more half
ironmans
than i’ve even completed
but the truth is is that
that doesn’t matter what matters is this
and i’m going to leave you with this
question
most of us have the ability to choose
our response when
adversity strikes and adversity
will strike sooner and later
big and small do we choose the
victim bucket where we thrash about in
those jaws of pain
fear and anxiety or
do we choose the perseverance bucket
where we know
that pain fear and anxiety are just
normal
and temporary if we surrender to the
experience
whichever you choose another day
is coming it’s another day
for you to choose your own adventure
thank you
you