Serve Others . . . Save Yourself

Thanks so much for all the feedback after my last piece, posted 2 weeks back. It seems to have really struck a chord with so many of you. Consider that previous post an outline of sorts, while this one is very much a call to action. 

In truth, that piece was really a pep talk to myself that I invited you to overhear, and it came just as I needed to get myself over the hump of the last few weeks of hail repair in Wyoming. It did the job and I am now back in North Carolina with my family, and with a few speaking gigs on the calendar. Things are beginning to turn very slowly. To be sure, the world is more unpredictable than ever, but my approach to it is ever changing, mostly out of necessity, but also because I want to be a better version of myself when (if) this is over.  

The number one question I’ve had in response to the previous piece was (basically) . . . ”I get the philosophy, and thanks for the Shackleton quotes…but what can I or do I need to do to put rubber on the road to my optimistic future?”

It’s a fair challenge and of course without knowing your personal individual circumstances I can’t frame it up for you specifically, but I can provide a plan of action that anyone can apply to their situation.

1. Decide what you really want for yourself for the future (maybe you already have it)

2. Find someone who wants what you want (or what you already have)

3. Sponsor them to get it

4. Stand back and watch the results in your own life

It’s a little-known truth that back in the 80’s my first sales coach in my first sales job at Bally’s Gym was none other than Zig Ziglar. And when I say Zig Ziglar, I don’t mean Zig on video or audio tape. I mean Zig Ziglar in the flesh right there in front of me, in the same room preaching sales and salesmanship. Unforgettable.

Zig is, of course, well known for saying, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want” (I promise no more quotes). My formula above is similar of course but with an essential difference.

Zig’s formula is general. Mine is very specific. It is so much easier to help a real “someone” get the exact same thing you want (or already have). You know them personally, can understand their real need, their emotions, their challenges and the de-railers that thwart them. And very importantly, you can understand why they care.

In recovery, we call this “sponsorship”. It is the idea that someone who has created some track record in recovery (and life) is the ideal partner to help someone else achieve the same goal. For all the reasons and motivations I have just given, a sponsor, is absolutely key to anyone’s journey of recovery.

But most importantly, sponsoring someone else is the key to the sponsor’s own continued recovery.  The number one beneficiary of the sponsorship is the sponsor. In serving someone else, the sponsor assumes a renewed responsibility for their own sobriety, and continues to have first-hand access to all of the challenges, fears and failures that anyone on the path experiences. Seeing and sharing someone else’s struggle, is the way to keep the struggle real.

Sponsoring someone else to sobriety keeps the danger of slipping in my full gaze. The reality of temptation and the realization of the grip that addiction can have on you can and will diminish in your memory unless you are confronted by it regularly. 

Sponsorship keeps me alert to the threat and alive to the task.

So it is with the dedicated achievement of any worthwhile goal, and certainly with the achievement of staying optimistic and positive during the pandemic. My advice to you is to find someone who is also struggling to maintain their perspective (but who desperately wants to) and serve them wholeheartedly by sponsoring their emotional health and wellbeing. By being the person who they will turn to for encouragement, support and perspective

(One caveat here. This isn’t an accountability group. They can turn to you, but you don’t turn to them. If you need a sponsor find one of your own, but it mustn’t be the person relying on you as that will ultimately diminish their confidence in you, trust me)

This formula is so effective because it is personal and direct. You won’t be able to hide from the challenges or the results, or pat yourself on the back for your “good intentions”. You’ll be exposed in ways you can’t imagine, but you’ll be alive and authentic, and that will make all the difference.

There are of course many ways to volunteer and be of service to “people”, but full engagement and the blessing and reward that comes from it can only be found from helping a “person”. A real, living, breathing, right in front of you, messy, person.

Give it a go, and let me know what you find.

See you down the trail,

Charlie

Adventures in Monotony

As the intrepid Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton famously noted,

“Optimism is true moral courage.”

Ernest Shackleton aboard his ship THE ENDURANCE in 1914.

It takes true courage to be optimistic and for me, as for you, every day this year has been an exercise in summoning up the courage to sustain optimism. It’s just as much a daily battle, a choice by choice, decision by decision effort as remaining sober. Anyone can be optimistic when things are going your way. But who we are when life is uncertain is what really matters.

This is my third article weighing up my thoughts and responses to this pandemic year. While my overall intent is to use my personal experience to (hopefully) provide some measure of insight, motivation and reasonable actions to follow to confront the challenge we are all facing, I also have to acknowledge and share my own depth of frustration with how the year has panned out. So be warned, what follows is really a pep talk to myself, a meditation on monotony and an encouragement to press on.

As I write, I’m 2,000 miles away from home in a featureless Airbnb, exhausted at the end of another 14-hour day pushing dents out of a similarly featureless four door sedan. I’m lonely, I’m tired, I’m confronted by another month of the same routine, doing work that in some way is an affront to my current sense of self. I worry about Astacianna because she is fighting her own health issues, but we need the income. So I am here in Wyoming chasing hailstorms, the kind of work I was doing years ago when I was younger, fresher and had yet to discover the world of expeditions and adventure that I’ve been living in for the past 20 years or so. Am I really here again?

This was not supposed to be how this year played out. This year was meant to be the culmination of 8 years of really hard work and a fuller realization of the next stage in my life. Doing speaking gigs, being hired to write and taking on another big adventure; The next 2 legs of my 5.8 Global Adventure Challenge . . . and then COVID-19 happened.

The feeling reminds me of how my stint in prison played out nearly 10 years ago, in that just as things were really coming together, I was dealt a blow that seemed tremendously unfair. And just like that time, my appreciation of what was coming was initially slow to sink in, but the consequences came very quickly and with their own certainty and finality.

Initially, just a couple of speaking gigs were postponed, then they were cancelled outright and then within a few weeks everything I had planned for the entire year, all 20 speaking gigs, plus events and expeditions, were cancelled. All gone. And along with them went my line of sight to any kind of income.

So, with that self pitying whine set aside, as I’m pulling these dents out of these cars in a windswept tent in Wyoming, I have plenty of time to reflect on what I chose to do next and why. Why?!

HAMMER TIME! Fine tuning my paintless dent repair on a vehicle panel. One dent at a time . . . . repeat . . . repeat . . .

What I did next was almost second nature. I hit the phones and made calls to any and every person that I had ever worked with back in the day when I was running around the world chasing storms,  repairing hail damaged cars. The economics of repairing hail damaged cars are pretty simple. When a car has 500 hail dents in it, its value drops from $30K+ to near nothing. Regardless that it drives as well as ever and is mechanically sound. The car is good only for scrap, but with a few tools, a little bit of knowledge and a ton of patience, the car can be returned to cosmetic perfection and to its KBB value in about a day. For that little piece of magic, a technician can earn upwards of $1000. Many of my old friends are still in the business and several of them were eager to help me find work. But the "finding" and the "doing" are two very different things. My speaking on big stages was traded in for hard physical labor all day, every day.  

COVID-19 may have brought the world to a near standstill, but hail storms are a constant, and there are always hail damaged cars to repair somewhere in the world, and so within a few days and after a lot of humbling calls, I was heading out to San Antonio, Texas for six weeks of non-stop, back breaking work…not what I had planned and certainly not what I wanted…but at least I had an income in 2020 and that felt like moving forward. Again. 

Monotony can have rewards, seriously!

Hail damaged cars have 100’s to 1000’s of dents. Some are pebble-sized and take super close inspection in bright lights from a myriad of angles to make sure that none are missed. You check, double-check, triple-check, then say a little prayer (!) take satisfaction in a job well done. It’s never perfect, but there is an undeniable reward to working laboriously with your hands and simple tools to turn a pock-mocked vehicle into a product good looking enough to make the customer/car owner say WOW!! when they come to pick it up.

In truth, psychologically and physically, there is not that much difference between running Badwater and pulling dents. When I start on a new car, it is strangely exciting. I have no idea what unforeseen problems await, or how I’ll overcome them. I only know that they are there and that, like COVID-19, they aren’t going to magically disappear. I’m reminded that anything can be overcome by constant application, moving forward, making the next right decision and next right effort. I don't have to do everything, I only have to do this one thing right in front of me. Physically, it's uncomfortable, grueling, painful and stressful. But it is also weirdly satisfying, knowing that I will always try to adapt to the changing landscape. What happens to us in life isn't nearly as important as what we do about it.

But the similarities to Badwater end right there. It may be similar in application, but pulling dents certainly isn’t the same inspiration as a long run through the desert! I wake up every day now, fired up, because that’s who I have to be in order to provide for my family. I do a good job talking to myself, and I take a few quiet minutes to be grateful, but how do I hold on to gratitude as the day goes on? I work on vehicles that don’t cooperate, with customers that are demanding and with co-workers with their own issues.

And while there is some genuine satisfaction that comes from a vehicle reinstated, and a boost to my bank account, if that had been enough, I would have stayed with that business. I wouldn’t have traded out my adventures of the last 20 years for the comfortable retirement that I would have had if I just kept at this work for these past years.

WHAT A FEELING!! Crossing the finish line at the BADWATER ULTRAMARATHON, my favorite race on the planet! I’ve completed the grueling 135 miles through Death Valley and up Mt. Whitney 6 times and I’m looking forward to the NEXT TIME!

So, what keeps me going, aside from the necessity of meeting everyday expenses and obligations. Simply put, dollars in the bank now are adventures in the future. Every day I do this, I am literally buying weeks of adventure. In the future. I don’t know when specifically, but I do know that there is a future and that it does contain the adventures I live for. I will run again. And I will always give my best effort to provide for my family. 

Therein lies my sense of optimism. My hopefulness for the future.

Optimism, like sobriety, is its own reward. And like sobriety, it is a gift but not a given. It must be fought for. With patience and tenacity. Shackleton knew that if he was to survive the wreck of The Endurance he would need to put the

“. . . footprint of courage into the stirrup of patience.”

So it is with 2020! And this pandemic. Optimism will keep us all focused on the wrapup of this phase and the start of the next adventure. But, it will take courage to remain focused on that. And . . .

only patience, with the here and now, will see us through.

Even when you feel STUCK, find a way to have FUN!

See The Endurance mired in the unyielding ice as Ernest Shackleton and his crew take to sport as “a necessary diversion for the health of the body, mind, and humours.”

See you down the trail,

Charlie

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It’s called GO! Condition.

FREE BOTTLE of a supplement that I am using and loving are still available with my special link and promo code. Click here (or scan QR CODE below) and enter ENGLE at checkout. Your shopping cart will say $0.00 plus FREE SHIPPING after you enter ENGLE … sweet deal!

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I’m Fixin’ To Get Healthy

#GETFOCUSED

In the South, there’s on old colloquial term that people have used for a couple of hundred years. In short, they say, “fixin’ to.” As in, I’m fixin’ to go down to the creek or I’m fixin’ to cut the grass. My grandad used to use the term often. In most cases, he meant that he was going to start right away, taking care of whatever chore he intended to do. But sometimes it was more nuanced. Sometimes “fixin’ to” do something actually meant that he wasn’t quite ready to start but he wanted others to know his intentions. To really complicate matters, sometimes “fixin’ to” could also mean that he actually had no real intention of ever doing the stated task. It’s a wonder that anyone ever learns to speak English. But I digress. Here is the point . . . Don’t wait for the pandemic to end to get started on living your healthiest life!

#GETSTARTED

I’m not being political when I make the observation that the over-riding themes of the response to the global pandemic have been two-fold;

• Kick the can down the road and hope that it resolves itself and that we can pay back the debts we incur in the process

OR

• Deny the effect/ effectiveness of personal intervention and responsibility.

Neither approach augers well. While none of us is at fault for the pandemic, we all have a responsibility to prepare ourselves for its effects and to respond to the actual circumstances. This means being accountable both financially and physically. I’ll leave the financial stuff to the accountants and stick to the physical…which I know more about.

What is the right approach to personally confronting the pandemic?

I think in this regard, recovering addicts like me have an advantage over the general populace. We know to take not just one DAY at a time, but really one CHOICE at a time and to focus on making the next right decision. In running terms, we can only cover the miles in front of us rather than replaying the miles behind or speculating about the miles that we may need to run tomorrow.

In short, we have to forget yesterday’s success or failure and let tomorrow worry for itself. Right now is what matters. 

What is my plan for today?

While there are still plenty of unknowns about the pandemic, we do at least have some pretty good indications on the best approach to dealing with Covid-19

• Don’t catch it (ideal but also not entirely in your control, although risk can clearly be minimized by social behavior, wearing of masks etc.)

• Be in the best shape you can be in the event you do catch the virus. (Entirely within your control)

The virus is, of course, essentially egalitarian…it wants everyone to catch it…and it will meet you where you are and treat you accordingly. If you are predisposed or weakened by prior conditions the virus will be merciless, as I have seen first hand. But if you are prepared, it will deem you a “bad host” and literally won’t “go viral” as a result of your encounter. This is where a public health crisis and personal responsibility meet head on and choose to either wrestle or dance.

This is my personal THREE-STEP PLAN for dealing with Covid-19.

Step 1 - First, Do No Harm. 

The famous hippocratic oath is as relevant today as it has ever been. Hippocrates, was known as the “Father of Medicine” and is perhaps even more famous for saying “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. This quote, though thousands of years old, acknowledges the importance of healthy eating and how the nutrients in various foods have healing properties. I am convinced that one of the reasons the US has been hit so hard by the coronavirus is because our eating habits have exposed us to an even greater risk of inflammation and disease. Our nation’s extreme rate of obesity and excess weight literally has made us sitting ducks for the virus.

#GETVEGGIES

(Plant-based eating doesn’t have to be boring. These photos are straight from my dinner table!)

I’ll spare you the polemic on how and why this has become the case (Big Food and Big Pharma). I’ll simply state that I indentify with Michael Pollan’s Haiku: “Eat Food. Not Much. Mostly Plants.” and feel this approach ensures that we, as individuals, have the nutrition our bodies are designed for and that they crave to build, grow, energize and recover from any and all of our activities, including warding off viruses and other threats.

step 2 - Get Active. Outdoors.

#GETACTIVE

I use running and biking for meditation, relaxation, conditioning and to create the kind of intentional stress that my body will respond to positively. My diet fuels my activity and my activity sustains me mentally, emotionally and physically.

The benefits of any exercise are of course well researched, documented and proven…but crucially I think exercising in the outdoors is manifestly superior to exercising indoors. Exercising outdoors invites unpredictability, cold, wet, wind, heat, sounds and smells and the full engagement of every sense. For so much of our lives we have become conditioned to expect and demand comfort. Personally I have always comfort to be highly overrated. I can’t think of a single valuable lesson I’ve learned from being comfortable. Running, biking, hiking, swimming outdoors, all throw out the illusion of comfort and control. It trains us to be alert, engaged and to forget ourselves, our cares and our comforts.

Yes, you’ll get bitten and stung occasionally, you’ll be freezing cold over over heated, but you’ll feel alive and in touch with the earth and its wonders…plus you’ll get all the Vitamin D your immune system needs to be at its best should this or any other virus pay a visit.

#GETOUTSIDE

STEP 3 - Prioritize Sleep. RECOVER.

For so much of my life sleep has had a bad name. I actually used to say out loud that I was an expert at sleep deprivation (and not just as a drug addict). No more. New research shows the benefits of sleep for all areas of our health, including immunity, are irrefutable. The more sleep I get, the better I feel. Sleep is the ultimate anti-inflammatory and recovery prescription. But how much sleep is right for me and when should I get it? Pretty much every big mistake I made in my life, I made after 9pm. In my experience not much good happens after 9pm, unless you are in bed. You know it’s true. So make it your goal to be in bed when the clock has a 9 in it and commit to staying there until dawn wakes you. I guarantee you’ll be getting most of what you need and you’ll arrive at the new day emboldened to make more of the right choices for your health and the health of those around you.

So, there you have it, eat foods without “best before” dates, exercise mindfully daily in the outdoors and get to bed by 9ish.  

#GETSLEEP

My final words for today:

Good things will happen, and if bad things visit, you’ll be well armed for the fight.

See you down the trail . . .

~ Charlie

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@gocondition #DEFYCOMFORT

It’s called GO! Condition.

FREE BOTTLE of a supplement that I am using and loving are still available with my special link and promo code. Click here (or scan QR CODE below) and enter ENGLE at checkout. Your shopping cart will say $0.00 plus FREE SHIPPING after you enter ENGLE … sweet deal!

share link is: http://bit.do/go-engle