Overcome Your Biggest Fears - Commitment vs Fear Exercise

"The hero is no braver than an ordinary man - but he is brave five minutes longer."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

More than a decade ago (1996-2000 time frame), I was consumed by my fear of things not turning out in my life.  I was hesitant, apprehensive, and worrisome.  I had been telling myself for 5 years that I would make the move from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles, and hoped I'd run a marathon someday (yes, my first marathon).  I was also in a holding pattern in my romantic relationships.  One day I woke up sick and tired of being stopped by my fear.  Not long after having these thoughts 9/11/01 happened providing me a defining moment of courage.  Sometime between then and now, many people started relating to me as fearless.  That perception couldn't be further from the truth, as I am as terrified as I always was.

Sometimes fear seems so much bigger than we are.

So, an ostrich walks into a bar...

While I am indeed someone who routinely runs extreme mountain and desert races, I took a 6 year turn as a stand up comic (not that I was ever really funny), married the girl of my dreams after 7 years of trying to convince her I was the guy of her dreams (I guess I'm still trying to convince her), and I willingly get up in front of large groups of strangers to give speeches (check out this awesome USA Today Money article on taming public speaking fears), the one thing that is a constant is that I am still very much afraid.

I fear failing at the things most important to me.  I fear people not liking me.  I fear those not liking me being vocal in their disapproval (the cliche unhappy cool kids at school talking behind your back in a mean spirited way).  I fear trying to inspire people (and having them walk away uninspired).  I fear being judged (harshly).  I fear running 100 miles (and not finishing or worse, walking away not able to run due to injury).  I fear the failure of my relationship.  I fear sadness, due to my past battles with depression.  I have a lot more to lose today than I did in the late 90's and early 2000's.  Being older (maybe wiser) I understand the consequences of my actions (and not following through on things).  I feel the emotional impact of letting people down a lot deeper than before.  My anxiousness and fears have only escalated.

The very serpent that helped me overcome my fear of snakes in 2006.

I turned a corner in my life in late 2000, where I realized that there may be no place where I feel more alive, than when confronting my greatest fears, and when facing my darkest demons. When facing one's fear, there arises a sense of power you can not experience while armchair quarterbacking your favorite reality TV show. When you are out in life doing (rather than thinking about doing) you are experiencing life real time, you are more present, more alive and turned on, plugged in and vital. This, my friends, is what life could be about.  It is what I've made my life about.

It took me years to learn the tough lessons of what ignoring my fear (especially of failure) creates in my life.  I still experience breakthroughs in this area from time to time.  Last Sunday was another example of this for me.  It's interesting how having your life flash before your eyes brings crystal clarity about what's important to you and how precious and fragile life really is.  It can all change in a second.  A single moment can bring us to our knees.

Together 12 years, married for 5 so far!

What fear is presently holding you back? Are you not asking for a promotion? Are you wanting to switch jobs or even careers?  Are you not signing up for your dream race (the one that terrifies you)? Are you not telling a special friend how you really feel about them? Are you not taking calculated risks towards what your soul desires, what you crave to feel fully alive???

**Imagine me shaking you by the shoulders right now, SHAKING YOU VIGOROUSLY**

WAKE UP, MY FRIEND!!! Your life is right now, today, happening this very moment. Why are you wasting it empowering your fears!?!?

I have a little game I remind myself of when I realize I've become complacent.  Sometimes I over think and rationalize my inaction.  It is a simple mental reframing of commitment vs fear.  We are either more committed to what we want to create in life, or we are hiding behind our fear.  It's an either or thing.  There comes an aha moment when you realize that overcoming our fear doesn't mean being fearless, as courage is really defined by acting in the face of our greatest fears.  The larger and deeper the fear runs, the more courageous the act.  We all have more courage than we can possibly imagine.

So, are you going to be committed to your dreams and desires, or will you empower your fears?  The choice seems simple, but only action solidifies that commitment.

"There are those of us who are always about to live. We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down / until, until, until. It always seems as if there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we begin living."
-George Sheehan


I invite you to do something today that scares you.  Yes, even that very thing you've been avoiding.  The thing you are hiding out from.  Life is shorter than we relate to it being.  Fear puts the soul to sleep, except when we are facing it.  If you're reading this, I love you. I believe in you.  It will feel really good to no longer be captive to that fear.  Do it.  Come on, you can, I promise you can.

Now go take on some dragons.

Each accomplishment  is merely the starting point of another dream.

Meeting My Maker on a Sunday Night - My Aron Ralston Near Miss

"The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong, that’s when adventure starts."

-Yvon Chouinard

I am so glad you are reading this blog entry.  Let me rephrase that, I am so glad I am sitting at my computer on a Monday and am not presently buried beneath dense foliage in a ravine with a broken leg, or worse.  It was a rough night, last night...

NOT A THROUGH TRAIL - that sign is for other people... not for me!

I've been running my whole life.  I have come to develop an identity problem which is to say, I can't imagine myself not running.  I can't even imagine identifying as something else.  My wife Kate is struggling with that identity challenge right now (she broke her right leg and had surgery in November), and I'm doing all I can to support her emotionally and physically through it (stopping just short of running way less myself so she's not confronted by that reality).  It is one of the greatest challenges we've yet faced as a couple.  Sometimes we're both worn down emotionally, and we get into a fight over absolutely nothing (bear with me, this sets something else up).  We have recently fought over navigation, missing part of a hockey game, leaving the house on time, and an online GoPro order.  Seriously folks, these fights might have had a deep undercurrent of something else, but they were fights about absolutely nothing of substance.  Nothing essential, nor important.  The last two fights we had were back-to-back nights (Friday & Saturday) and combine with that my not running nor working out since Thursday, come Sunday I was in a bad, overly emotional, and mentally dark place.

So I went out for a run Sunday mid afternoon.  I didn't know how far or for how long I'd be gone, but I knew I needed something long to clear my head.

Backbone Trail selfie, almost one of my last photos...

***FLASHBACK***

Last bit of sunlight fades away... this is getting interesting.

It's around 4:45pm, Sunday, January 12, 2014.  The sun has long since disappeared over Temescal Ridge & Cathedral Rock, and I'm buried in a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, part of the north splintering of Rustic Canyon.  I have taken a horribly wrong turn.  Wandering up a creek bed I thought was part of the old (and heavily overgrown) Bay Tree Trail, I got stuck where landslides have boxed the creek in, so I start to climb out & around it.  I find myself on the side of a crumbling rocky hillside utilizing plants & branches to not fall down the steep slope.  At one point, every brittle, dry piece of chaparral is breaking off in my hands, no matter how thick or deeply rooted it seemed.  The rock starts to crumble under my trail shoes and I notice that there's nothing to catch my fall before about a 4-story (60 foot?) drop into the rocky creek bed below.  Looking off into the distance, I'm probably 3/4's of a mile from any real trail.  I don't have my cell phone.  I don't have a light.  Nobody knows where I am.  "Genius, Jimmy! Absolute genius,"  I say to myself.  My last bit of ambient daylight is fading like a K-mart beach towel.  I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  I must start carefully calculating every movement, and at the same time, if I stay in the same spot too long, the hill will crumble beneath my 180+ lbs. and give way to big air.  I force myself to keep moving and mentally brace myself for the worst.

Trying not to achieve a similar fate, unsettling at best.

Thankfully, I'm not panicking, but I am acutely aware that if I fall, I'm very likely going to be too injured to crawl out, in a place inhabited by at least one mountain lion (I've discovered lion scat and deer skat on the game trail I'm now crawling up to get to the ridge).  After crawling sideways and upwards for at least 45 minutes, breaking branches to climb towards the ridge line, I end up in a clearing (relief).  With two large sets of bones (relief just left the building).

"When I've lost my way or when I am confused about a path to take, I remember that most answers I need I already possess – deep inside. I am naturally creative, resourceful and whole. If I consult my invisible compass, I’ll know what to do."

-Steve Goodier

Estimated route = GREEN / Incidents = YELLOW

The sun is now gone but atop this ridge I'm getting a little light from a relatively full moon (full moon is 3 days later).  I start to realize crawling through this game trail at dusk (in darkness) probably isn't a great strategy anymore.  I can see the lights of the San Fernando Valley about 1.5 to 2 miles to the north, but would have to drop into another canyon/ravine to get there.  I resolve to keep climbing and to stay standing as much as I can to avoid looking like the prey of a cougar.  I climb through multiple brier patches and stop occasionally to pick a half dozen to dozen thorns out of my hands.  I'm still not panicking, but I'm wondering if I should hunker down and wait for daylight.  I have half a bottle of water left, a 200 calorie granola bar, and my legs are starting to cramp from the fatigue of forcefully climbing through (and over) dense vegetation.  After what seems like 2 hours, but is probably in reality 75-90 minutes of dusk, I reach the ridge line above Fire Road 30 (a single track trail we jokingly call Flyer Road 30), one of my favorite lesser known paths in the Santa Monica Mountains.  I am overcome with emotion.  Not really joy, but rather, a profound relief that I'm not hurt, and I'm not spending the night facing the fears I was just crawling out of a canyon with.  I dump the rocks and dirt out of both shoes and start to piece together how I'm going to get home.  At the very least, I feel safe again.
***END FLASHBACK***

First photo after crawling out of the unknown.

Looking homeless, dirty, cut & bruised.

I have always had a rule to not drink when I'm upset, angry or depressed.  I have a new rule now to not go trail exploring when in that same space.  When I went running yesterday, I didn't know where I was going to go.  I didn't know for how long, nor how far I was going to run.  As I ran up Sullivan Ridge, I made up my mind to do a loop that dropped into Murphy's Ranch, climbed J-Drop then the section of the Backbone Trail known as Rogers Road, take Temescal Ridge to the Hub Junction, drop down Fire Road 30 to Bent Arrow connecting to Dirt Mulholland, then run that to Sullivan Ridge, and drop back down to my car.  I estimate this loop to be something between 15-18 miles.  When I reached the upper part of Rogers Road, there's a drop down trail back into Rustic Canyon called Bay Tree.  I've always wanted to explore it, and know 2-3 people who have.  I thought, "I know there will be some bushwhacking, I know there's not much daylight left, but what the hell, it's only a couple of miles!"  I had a secondary intuitive sense that said, "this is gonna be an adventure" and I thought, "hell yeah, I'm ready for an adventure!"

My skin is gashed and bruised all over, this is one small sample.

This was the part where I greatly erred.  I ignored my intuition which said, "this is shaping up to be a bad idea.  Ooh, sounds like a fun bad idea!"

RULES I ALREADY KNEW (AND PREACH)

*Whenever possible, don't run trails alone

*When running alone, let someone know your planned route

*Have a planned route

*Carry a cell phone, in case you get stuck and need to alert someone

*Carry a light if there's any possibility of getting lost or running after dark

*Carry more than adequate fluid & calories in case you get lost

*If you get to an impassable patch of trail/creek bed, turn around and retrace your steps, don't be a hero

*Let someone know your planned route (restated for it's importance)

*Help others learn from your most boneheaded mistakes (check)

A NEW RULE

*Just like drinking: when you are upset, don't go seeking "adventure" on the trails, just go run a super intense speed workout on a track or treadmill or something like that

GENERAL LIFE SIDE NOTE

Consider for a moment the last thing you said to your loved ones.  Would you be okay with that message if it was the last you ever delivered to them?  One of the things that haunted me, maybe what I was afraid of the most out there, was if the last things Kate & I said to each other (prior to my misadventure) were etched into eternity as the final exchange we had.  I got home and we immediately put it all behind us.  You have an opportunity to say things to the people you love, from love, each and every time you're with them.  I encourage you to utilize every opportunity to do that.  For your own sake.

Thanks for reading this.  I appreciate you (even if we don't know each other), no matter where you stand.  One more parting thought:

"If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning."

New Year Does Not Equal New You - We Require a New Outlook

"Ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose."
-Frank Tyger

Speaker Kevin Bracy does what he does best

#NewYearNewViewNewYOU
One of my mentors, heroes and all around favorite dudes inspired the title of this blog post.  Speaker Kevin Bracy posted an amazing little series of videos about how most people relate to the calendar turn of year as new hope, new promise and a new me/you!  He cautions us, that the reason most people fail in their resolve to do something is they fail to adopt a new outlook.  I realized that the reason I have been really successful the past half decade in what I call my "New Year's Promises" is a game of 3 questions that helps shift my outlook.  I missed this conversational empowerment exercise this year for the first time in as long as I can remember.  I didn't go for a NYE night hike, and I didn't join the crack-of-dawn Rose Parade run. And I didn't facilitate the post hike/run 3 questions game for so many of my closest friends, family and fellow runners.  This lead to NYE/NYD being the worst in recent memory.  But it's January 4th now, so let's forget January 1st, 2014 and look forward...

I am going to roll my 3 questions game out to anyone who reads this.  My invitation to you is this:

IF you read this, I invite you to take one step further and comment (or share/repost on your social media of preference: blog, Facebook status, etc.) all 3 complete questions with your specific personal/professional answers.

I have been practicing this exercise since at least 2009 and it's been super effective for ALL I have heard.  Ask David Villalobos how effective it was for him in the 2012-2013 transition (that's just the one I remember most from last year).

Here's the dealio - to complete the conversation (in your mind) about 2013, answer 2 questions:
1. What is one thing (only one) that you accomplished in 2013 that you're most proud of?
2. What is one thing (only one) that you failed at in 2013, most powerfully, what was your biggest failure?

And then the tricky question that opens 2014 with hope & promise:
3. What is one thing that you'd like to accomplish in 2014, that if you achieved this single thing, no matter what else happens this year, it would be impossible to declare the year a failure?  More often than not, this question stands independent of #2, but sometimes people link them as a reaffirmation of something they really want to get done.

SYMBOLISM: Chinese bamboo needs 5 yrs of constant attention to grow

MY ANSWERS:
1. I am proud of who I was in the space of traumatic situations in 2013.  Some of the trauma was self-induced (running 2x100-milers with 13 days recovery), but a lot of it was really unexpected (Kate miscarried a child in January, experienced a major family upheaval in July, and then Kate broke her leg in November), and in each case, I had my own fear and internal freak outs to deal with, and yet I was able to be the person I wanted to be (for myself, and for my wife) in those moments.

2. I failed in 2013 to be the writer/author I committed to being.  I set out in January with the goal of blogging 2 times per month (24 posts) and ended the year 8 short of that number.  I failed to blog at all in April, July, August and November.  In my book, I set out to write a chapter a week back in October.  I'm less than halfway to my goal of 11 chapters in the book (over that time frame).  Both of those are dramatic failures (based on what I'm up to right now).

3. In 2014, if I only accomplish one thing (that is in my power, as one of my goals is largely up to the universe to decide), the thing that would have me look back on the year as a success (no matter what else happens) is publishing my first book.  It's highly unlikely we're going to hit my February deadline, so my commitment is to an April/May timeline for release.  Back on the chapter per week game (and I still aim to blog every other week too).


Now, what is your 3?  I emphatically invite you to not skip this step and be bold in your 3 answers!  You want me (and other readers of this post) thinking about your #3 (and you need #1 and #2 to set the table), because no matter what it is, I believe in you.

"You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare."
-Georgia O'Keeffe