Exhale #14: I got drunk in a truck stop in the middle of nowhere
I was born with a genetic spine disorder called spondylolisthesis, spondy for short.
It causes one of the vertebrae in your spine to slip out of place onto the one below it. It also often comes with fractures in that vertebrae.
In January of 2013, 6 months after winning the 2012 Crossfit Games on a team and 2 months before the next season started, it took a turn for the worst. I started to notice numbness in my left foot.
At first I ignored it because it would go away pretty quickly any time I would warmup and have blood flowing through my leg.
It got to the point where I couldn’t feel anything below my left knee.
I was officially nervous.
I decided to go see my old doctor I saw as a kid while visiting home (he was an orthopedic surgeon). He took some fresh X-Rays.
Seeing him walk into the room with my results is a moment I’ll probably never forget.
Showing me this picture, he told me, “It’s pretty bad.”
He said some other things I don’t remember and then,“I honestly don’t understand how you’re even walking with this X-Ray. One wrong lift at this point could paralyze you.”
He said I would absolutely never do Crossfit again , I would need a lumbar fusion surgery, and I would probably be somewhat limited for the rest of my life. I was 22.
My head exploded.
I was devastated.
I thought things like “Why me!!?” and “This shouldn’t be happening to me!!!”
The next year was a very painful one emotionally and the most painful physically of my life.
I resisted the hell out of this reality and refused to accept it.
I saw several neuro and orthopedic surgeons around the country over the next month or so. One of my biggest concerns was that I would not be able to compete that year.
The night before the Crossfit Open began, I was scheduled to meet with another surgeon in Salt Lake City.
At that point I had gotten mixed signals from the other doctors (some saying I should be fine for a while and some not so much).
If this doctor didn’t tell me something new then I wouldn’t compete that year.
I was driving from Cedar City, UT to Salt Lake City (3.5 hour drive) the night before, and my car broke down. I didn’t have enough oil and the engine blew up.
It was the middle of the night and I had nowhere to bring it and nowhere to rent a car.
This was the nail in the coffin.
I wouldn’t make it to my doctor’s appointment tomorrow and there was no way I was getting another appointment before the time I needed to start the Crossfit open. My season was done before it started.
So I did what anyone would do in that situation.
I went to a truck stop and got drunk.
Resisting reality was the cause of all of my suffering in this situation. It is the cause of nearly all suffering in life.
Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is caused when we, as Eckart Tolle says, add pain on top of pain with our resistance. With our thoughts about what is happening to us.
Situations happen to us without our control. It’s our internal response to those situations that causes all of our real problems. And my internal response to this whole thing was shitty.
Because of this fact about suffering, all of the world’s major religions, spiritual teachings, and philosophers teach us about surrender.
How does one surrender to reality?
Conceptually I think I understand some things about surrendering, but doing so in the moment is something I’ll be working on the rest of my life.
Surrender is accepting reality. Accepting what is. It’s also surrendering our conditioned responses to situations.
Here are some things that have stuck with me and helped me learn about surrendering:
I’m listening to Michael Singer’s lecture series on surrender. Michael wrote The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment. In the lecture series he says that both of his books only have one real technique and it’s this:
To pay attention to when you tell yourself you like or dislike something. By simply noticing that we are having thoughts like “I don’t like this” or “this shouldn’t be happening” we become the watcher of our thoughts rather than believing we ARE those thoughts and that they are reality. When we are aware of our thinking we are no longer ruled by our thinking.
In Loving What Is, Byron Katie points to this same thing by suggesting that when something happens that we don’t like and we think to ourselves “This shouldn’t be happening,” we can tell ourselves “This should be happening” because it literally is happening.
Anything that is happening should be happening.
This has been a super helpful mantra for me.
Most of the time when Shai does something completely unexpected and “messes up” my expected schedule, the thought that immediately pops into my head is that “this should not be happening.”
When I think that thought, I feel tension in my chest and I can become frustrated.
Lately I’ve been trying to tell myself that “this should happen,” and it prevents all of those other thoughts from popping up almost completely.
It should happen because he’s a human being with his own schedule and rhythms and the world doesn’t revolve around me, and it (the world) certainly doesn’t care about unfolding exactly how I want.
The Stoic philosopher king, Marcus Aurelius, had a saying for surrender. “What stands in the way becomes the way.”
The things we think are obstacles in life are just life itself.
The faster we accept these things the more fluid our lives become.
All of these teachers are talking about something that we can practice nearly every second of every day.
Spirituality isn’t something that just happens on a meditation cushion, in a church or at an ayahuasca ceremony.
We can practice living a spiritual life in the way we do the dishes, the way we interact with our spouses and friends, and the way we relate to our work.
It’s paying attention to our minds more. Noticing what it does and remembering that we are not our thoughts or emotions.
Most of our thoughts we aren’t even choosing to think.
This is a lifelong practice.
So there I was drunk texting some friends from a truck stop in the middle of nowhere telling them what had happened.
My friend Adam offered to come all the way out to get me (3 hours away at this point) with an enormous trailer and hauling me and my car all the way back. What a guy!
Here’s what happened:
I made it to the doctor’s appointment and he told me what I wanted to hear. I’d be ok if I was careful through the season and could get surgery later that year.
I did the first Crossfit open workout later that day, hungover.
I was very careful with my training that year never lifting over 70% of my best lifts outside of competition.
I was in a ton of pain emotionally considering what would happen to me after my surgery and just feeling like a victim
We went on to win the 2013 CF Games
I got surgery in December of 2013
Luckily for me the fusion went perfectly and I haven’t had any back pain whatsoever since.
I didn’t learn anything from that experience until much later. Looking back on it now, I can see how much pain my resisting reality caused me.
My refusal to accept my medical condition also put my body at great risk.
I can’t say I regret it because those decisions got me to where I am today, but I can say with confidence that if I had to do it all over again it would be much more peaceful in my mind.
Laws to live by
Years ago at Working Against Gravity we created a list of core values.
At the time it felt kind of fun and grown up to do, but we had no idea why we were doing it or how it could possibly be useful.
Since then we have referenced that list dozens of times to make decisions, especially our number one value – client transformation.
We decided that we would put client transformation above everything else, and we have lived by that as best we could.
For instance, this came up several times when we were trying to decide what feature to build in our software next.
The question usually went something like, “Should we build x public facing feature that attracts new clients or build y feature that we think will improve our current customers’ experience and hopefully help them achieve better results?”
If faced with a decision like this we have always chosen to take care of current customers.
It’s possible that we could be more materially successful and make more money as a company by focusing more on other things, but this has helped us have integrity and reliability as a company, it’s allowed us to build an amazing reputation in our industry and it gives our team a shared north star.
I’ve done this personally for years as well by simply writing down what I value most. The two that have come up most consistently for me are integrity and courage.
When I have a tough decision to make part of my internal dialogue sounds like, “Which direction is more in integrity with who I say I am to myself and others?” Once I know which direction that is it’s reminding myself to have the courage to follow through with that action because I tell myself “that’s what I do.”
I think having 2-3 of these laws to live by can go a long way in providing clarity on important decisions.
Teaching Maturity
Now that I have a tiny little offspring, I think a lot about how to be the best parent possible. I came across this awesome take on how to teach maturity recently.
“Fairy tales and Bildungsroman stories work so well because maturity is almost impossible to transmit rationally, but is a very compelling concept aesthetically. It is learned by seeing others grow the courage to make meaningful decisions, and accept the duty and power and consequences that flow from them. It teaches a mastery that cannot simply be taught through abstract school lessons. If done properly, children will look forward to their place in the world.”
Fairy tales give one the ability to watch the transformation from immaturity to maturity in the span of 60-90 minutes. Pretty cool.
Question of the week
Weeks ago I wrote about how my coach, Zachery, has been having me pay attention to feelings of urgency in my life. He says that urgency is of child consciousness and usually is a sign of some unmet need.
So my question to you this week, if you’re interested, is “Where is urgency showing up in your life right now?” Then “What is it trying to mask, or what are you running away from in that moment?”
For me this shows up often with food in social situations. Especially in large events I have a feeling of urgency to eat and get full as quickly as possible.
I’ve realized that that is just me feeling some normal social anxiety which feels like tension in my chest and stomach.
The strategy that I created unconsciously a long time ago was to try to get rid of that feeling with either substances or food.
Realizing this hasn’t solved the problem, but it’s given me a little bit of awareness.
Now occasionally I notice that algorithm playing in my head in social situations and sometimes have more control.
It also helps me have a little more compassion for myself rather than berating myself for such lack self-control.
Peace,
Michael