Andrew Petty is Dying

So...funny story. My guest in this episode not only has a mind-blowing story to share but also the dubious distinction of having dated me more than 20 years ago. Don't worry--she exercised much better judgment in the years that followed!

Lindsay Nohl is just glad to be alive. There were many moments over the past two years when she was not at all sure that she would be much longer. Lindsay's story is one of profound mental, emotional, and physical anguish, a remarkable recovery, a new lease on life, and a new outlook on life, too. And Lindsay courageously brings her whole ordeal and what she's learned from it to this conversation to encourage and serve all of us.

This episode is packed with insight about choosing courage in the face of fear, the sacredness of the present moment, the power of empathy, and how Mortality can propel us to live with even more guts, gusto, and abandon.

A Word of Warning

This is a tremendously life-affirming story. But the journey to "life-affirming" passes through a prolonged season of desperation, when suicide was on the table for Lindsay. For some of you, this part of the story might hit too close to home, so I wanted to be sure you were aware in advance that it would come up if you tune in to the full episode.

Meet Lindsay Nohl

Lindsay currently lives in Victor, Idaho with her two dogs Owen & Brady, where she serves as executive director of a non-profit called Mountain Bike the Tetons. She is also a mountain bike coach and certified life coach (CLC). Prior to moving to the Tetons, Lindsay spent 18 years working for the National Outdoor Leadership School, or NOLS, as a field instructor, director of the Southwest program, and in other administrative roles in Arizona and Wyoming. She's a life-long athlete, and her initial passion for soccer carried into her early twenties. After attempts at playing soccer professionally, she dove headfirst into various outdoor sports like rock climbing, canyoneering, caving, and more recently, mountain biking. Today, her favorite outdoor adventures are long bikepacking trips in the desert southwest.

Reduced to Ashes

In August 2019, Lindsay's 8-year relationship with her partner was coming apart. Then, on a routine pre-run lap of a mountain bike race course, she crashed, landed on her face, and split her chin open. She got checked out, stitched up, and sent on her way. The visible injuries healed up, and she moved on.

Two weeks later, though, while talking to a friend at a social gathering, things started to get weird. In the middle of the conversation and from out of nowhere, "kill yourself, kill yourself" popped into her head. And things quickly went downhill from there.

Over the next nine months, Lindsay's life burned to the ground in a conflagration of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and bizarre physical symptoms. She hid her household knives from herself--painfully aware that the impulse to kill herself could at any time get the best of her. She lost her job of 18 years along the way, too, a consequence of both the deteriorating COVID situation and her own debilitated mental, emotional, and physical state. She wasn't eating, her gut was in shambles, and she lost 15 lbs. She couldn't perform some of the most basic life tasks. A laundry list of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds weren't up to the task of righting Lindsay's ship. She checked herself into a behavioral health center to be placed on suicide watch and did a stint in a treatment center, too. Nothing provided relief or a glimmer of hope for a better future.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

The Tide Begins to Turn

Then, mercifully, when the last fragile threads of hope were almost gone, the tide began to turn in Lindsay's favor. An integrative medicine doctor helped Lindsay heal her gut through nutrition, and gradually Lindsay's physical and mental health began to improve. So much so, in fact, that she was able to drive and ride her bike again. Then, a therapist helped Lindsay realize that her fall on the bike 9 months earlier had in fact given her a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the TBI was substantially complicit in causing her descent into mental, emotional, and physical hell. Until that moment, neither Lindsay nor anyone else supporting her through the ordeal had seen the connection.

And this time, the right medication became the final piece in the puzzle of Lindsay's recovery. On May 23, 2020, within 48 hours of beginning to take Wellbutrin, Lindsay texted her dad:

"Dad, I feel normal today. I'm cleaning the house and not really tired. And I feel 'happy.' It feels crazy. I think the Wellbutrin is working."

Wellbutrin is a norepinephrine and dopamine re-uptake inhibitor (NDRI), and it works by making the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine available to the brain's neurons for longer. (from verywellmind.com)

"It was so clear to me that I had a dopamine issue in my brain with how fast that stuff worked for me," said Lindsay. "It was like the key went in the lock and I turned back on, you know, as a human."

Like the Phoenix Rising from the Ashes

It has been an upward spiral from that point forward. Lindsay feels 95% normal again, with the main lingering symptom being diminished short-term memory.

"I'm like the Phoenix rising from the ashes here. And I have the ability to put the pieces back in any way I can...As the months have gone on, I've thought a lot about what decisions am I--I make decisions every day, many times a day and are those moving me in the direction I want to go with my life, you know? And so when everything's gone, it makes you think a lot about what you want."

Lindsay has put the pieces of her life together in impressive fashion--including getting back on her bike and conquering races more challenging than any she'd tackled pre-TBI.

Transferable Lessons

The point of this podcast is to help us all tap into the power of our Mortality to become the people we were made to be and live the lives we were made to live--to equip us with the mindset and the means to live with guts, gusto, and abandon. And to do so BEFORE a crisis hits because then it's too late. So, what transferable lessons are available to us from Lindsay's story that we can put into action in our own lives right now?

• Live in Community: Lindsay's friends and family were rock-solid supports for her through every grueling step of her ordeal. She says they literally saved her life.
• Treat Every Day Like a Bonus: Post-ordeal, Lindsay feels like every day is a bonus. Be willing to see each new day as a bonus in your own life--full of potential and possibility that didn't exist just one day before. See each day as a gift.
• Get in "f@%$ it" Mode!: Go for it! Why NOT do the scary or hard thing?! (Not recommending foolhardy recklessness, BTW...)
• Live Like There's No Tomorrow: Lindsay is more aware than ever now of the sacredness of the present moment. It's all we have. So make this moment, this day, your primary focus. How can you make it the best day it can be?
• Choose Courage Over Fear: Do the hard thing. Venture outside of your comfort zone. Don't waste time trying to get rid of fear; instead, practice becoming MORE brave.
• Be Kind to Others: You don't know what they're going through

Remember, Lindsay has been to the edge and back. She knows what it's like to stare Mortality in the face, and those are some of her big takeaways from that experience. We can borrow what she's learned and put them into practice in our own lives RIGHT NOW if we simply choose to--without having to experience a catastrophe of our own first.

I think that's a WAY better strategy. What do you think? The alternatives are tragic, in my opinion.

Let Today Be the Day!

"When everything's gone, it makes you think a lot about what you want." Wow. That hits home.

Listen. One day--maybe even one day very soon--you'll run out of tomorrows. You'll run out of second chances. You'll run out of time.

Grab yourself by the scruff of the neck today and shake yourself awake. Wake up to the reality of your Mortality, to the sacredness of this present moment--the only moment you've got.

Make the phone call to the estranged family member or friend. Take the first step toward fulfilling that big dream. Do the hard thing now. Start the big thing now. Tomorrow never comes, ladies and gents, there is only today.

Let today be a day like none other before it. The day that you summoned the courage to live with even more guts, gusto, and abandon by looking your Mortality square in the eyes and holding its gaze, unflinching and with resolve.

This is your one and only life. What will you make of it?

Remember, you ARE going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

I Can Help

Becoming the person you were made to be and living the life you were made to live with guts, gusto, and abandon is heroic work. It's not for the faint of heart. And it happens best in the company of others who have your best interests at heart.

Connect with me to learn more about how a powerful, confidential 1-1 coaching partnership or participation in a Graveyard Group can help you live even more courageously and die regret-free.

And I'm excited to share that the first-ever women's Graveyard Group will launch soon, too!

Connect with on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

If You Liked This Episode, I Think You'll Like These, Too

• Ep. 005 | How to Become the Boss of Your Fear: Bravery-building to Live With More Guts and Gusto
• Ep. 008 | More Alive Than Ever: How Pain Points the Way to Purpose
• Ep. 012 | How to Harness the Winds of Discomfort to Get Where You Want to Go: Becoming a Seasoned Sailor on the Seas of Life

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• The Untethered Soul (Michael A. Singer)
• Sabino Recovery (treatment center)

Connect with Lindsay

Email | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

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New to APiD?

I'm so glad you found Andrew Petty is Dying. This podcast is a mix of long-form interviews with fascinating people and short-form solos on topics that will help you acquire the mindset and the means to live with guts, gusto, and abandon.

If you're wondering where to start in the archive of episodes, I recommend these three episodes, in this order:

1. Ep. 001 | You're Dying: How to Make the Most of It
2. Ep. 016 | The Question That Changes Everything: The Go-to Tool for Living the Life You Were Made to Live
3. Ep. 006 | The Nine Lives of Lise Leroux: One Woman's Mind-blowing Tale of Living With a Terminal Diagnosis

My older son, Macgray, was a guest on this show way back in May of 2020, and it's been my intention all along for his younger brother, Marshall, to be a guest as well. We've finally pulled that off, and this episode is the result.

As their dad, it's a personal treat to have conversations with both of my boys recorded for posterity. And I genuinely got to know each of my sons better through these conversations.

As a student of the human condition, it's fascinating to get a glimpse of the world through the eyes of young men in formation.

There's a simplicity to the way Marshall sees things at his age, as you might expect--but there's a tremendous amount of depth, too. His heart and mind are working round the clock to make sense of this life and the world we live in, and he uses the words and concepts at his disposal to express his unique perspective in this conversation. In the course of our conversation, Marshall connected new dots of meaning and insight as a result of the attempt to put words to previously unexpressed thoughts.

And Mortality came up on its own, without me digging for it. Apparently, the reality of Mortality weighs upon even a 9-year-old's heart and mind.

Meet Marshall

From the moment he drew his first breath, Marshall has been a wonderful, wiggly, extraverted bundle of energy and intensity. We never did find a swaddle that could contain him; he always worked one arm free and then dismantled the whole assembly. He could suck down a bottle in what seemed like one mighty gulp, and if his big brother could do something, then Marshall made it his mission to be able to do that thing, too. Today, he's got his own funky style, he's deeply moved by music, and he loves being with people.

Some Highlights From This Conversation

• Marshall tutors me in the neuroscience of learning.
• Marshall reveals two of his biggest fears as a kid.
• We discuss the keys to finding your unique path in life. Hint: It's simpler than we might think.
• Marshall shares how he's overcoming his personal kryptonite so that his superpowers are more available, more often.
• Marshall makes up a new word to describe the multi-faceted life he wants to lead as a grown-up.
• And more...

Tune in to the full episode for the full experience. It won't disappoint.

What message does a nine-year-old boy have for you as an adult? You might be surprised.

The Inimitable Power of Curiosity-fueled Conversations

As our conversation wound down, it was super cool to hear Marshall acknowledge that he "just said a bunch of things that I didn't realize I knew how to say. I feel like my brain grew." That's a 9-year-old's way of expressing what happens when we engage in curiosity-fueled conversations. We grow, expand, discover, change, and unlock new "lines of learning"--to borrow a phrase Marshall coined during this episode.

How often do you have curiosity-fueled conversations?

Let's Start Our Own Curiosity-fueled Conversation

If you don't have many curiosity-fueled conversations in your life, connect with me, and let's start our own together. Our conversations will generate Insight, Insight will generate Action, and Action will generate Transformation! Insight + Action = Transformation.

We could all benefit from transformation in some area of our life.

Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

I look forward to starting a new conversation with you!

Remember, you ARE going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

Follow Andrew Petty is Dying & Leave a Review

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If You Liked This Episode, I Think You'll Like These, Too

• Ep. 009 | Awaken Your Inner Kid to Be the Best Grown-up You Can Be: A Lighthearted and Enlightening Conversation With My 10-Year-Old Son
• Ep. 014 | Dare to Dream Again: The Antidote to a Mediocre Life
• Ep. 018 | Life's 3 Big Questions: A Conversation with the Coroner

Today's guest is none other than yours truly, thanks to the creativity and generosity of my guest on episode 38, Natalie Niksa. It was Natalie's idea to turn the mic around, so to speak, and interview me. I was excited about the idea right away. I'm not actually 100% clear on why I was excited, but I try to follow my energy closely, and when excitement shows up, I do my best to pay attention to it and act on it. So I took Natalie up on her offer, and today's episode is the result.

In this conversation, through the lens of my own story, we discuss curiosity as a superpower, recapturing childhood dreams, how to use Mortality as a motivator in daily life, how to address foreboding joy when it shows up, how to use this podcast to get after it in life, my dreams of being a drummer-surfer-documentarian, and more.

Along the way, I'm more open and vulnerable than I've ever been before in any public forum. The emotions at the end of our conversation surprised me. And though I had a bit of a vulnerability hangover after we recorded, I'm glad to share honestly from my story because I know it will be useful and meaningful to someone else out there.

I want to acknowledge Natalie's courage in taking on the role of interviewer. She's a wiz in the culinary world, but the podcast interviewer world is new territory altogether. If you tune in to the full episode, I think you'll agree that she does a great job.

Here is a sampling of highlights from the conversation, organized according to 4 of Natalie's 7 (awesome!) questions and excerpts from my responses.

Q: Share with us a bit of your own process of curiosity and what tools help you remain creatively free to produce what you are sharing with so many?

A: For me, curiosity is not a process, it's an innate impulse that, having identified it, I now use as sort of a superpower. I follow my curiosity. My curiosity leads me to good places. My curiosity leads me to people sensing that I have a genuine interest in who they are, and I do. And it leads me to ask whatever question comes up next, which when I am myself, I do well. When I'm in my head I don't do it very well--I get kind of clutchy and clinchy. When I let my curiosity guide me, it goes to good places, whether it's in my personal life or professional life...So the process, if there is any, is to major on it...

Curiosity creates dialog, and dialog tends to generate insight, and insight is a precursor to transformation. So curiosity is maybe the catalyst that allows some of that to occur. And of course it works really well for me in my chosen path professionally, and relationally as well...

Q: What dreams are you recapturing lately?

A: Childlikeness...It's a very personal journey, too, because when Anxiety became debilitating in my early 20s...it was maybe the final nail in the coffin at that point in my life of childlikeness because it became a desperate struggle to stay alive because the Anxiety was so bad that I did at one point say in my mind if this doesn't stop soon, then I can't live any longer. Jordan Peterson talks about...new things showing up in our lives unexpectedly--especially ones that are unwelcome--is an intense and difficult form of chaos to deal with. And it deconstructs the whole framework we had put in place to understand how we navigate life. And that's what happened to me when Anxiety showed up because I literally thought I was going to die any moment. And so it really put the final nail in the coffin of childlikeness for a time...

And as I've first done battle with the anxiety and then, more recently, accepted it and allowed it to come along, I have begun to really attempt to recapture childlikeness and to learn to want things with abandon and without judgment or censorship…

I still feel as if the real Andrew isn't known yet to me and to the world, and the parts of the real Andrew that are within me that aren't yet made known to the world are the drummer, the surfer, the guitar player, the artist, the documentarian...Those are all dreams that capture my imagination, and I can inhabit those dreams in my heart and my mind and see myself living that way and it feels like me. So there are ways in which the life that I currently live in some ways still doesn't feel quite like me. But that isn't the same as to say that I'm living an inauthentic or counterfeit life because I think the process of putting ourselves together over the course of our adulthood--if we're willing to become more and more consciously engaged in it--is to uncover who we truly are...

Q: What are a few ways that you consciously and perhaps even uncomfortably use mortality as a motivator on a daily and/or weekly basis?

A: I do live with awareness of mortality most days, but it's not for the reasons you might suspect. That's largely derived from the kind of anxiety that I experience. So the awareness of Death comes part and parcel with the kind of anxiety I more typically experience than others. And that's actually, again, part of why this podcast exists, part of why the Graveyard Group masterminds exist is because my hyper-awareness of mortality led me to believe that maybe there are others who don't think about it enough and in thinking about it more would find greater freedom to become the people they were made to be and live the lives they were made to live. And it turns out, it works that way...

As I've engaged in this practice of the podcast and the Graveyard Group, [I've learned that] you can approximate the pressure of a crisis...through intentional practice. The way it translates into my own life is in decision-making--am I gonna do this or that. Maybe it's about am I gonna spend another half hour working on my computer or am I gonna take a walk, because my son just came in and asked if I wanted to go on a hike. It's not as if every time I'll choose to go on a walk with my son because there's a time for work and a time for play, but I at least pause more than I think I might have in the past and ask myself, when I'm that elderly gentleman, for example, in the retirement community and I'm thinking about the way I spent my time, what will I remember most? And it's gonna be the walks with my son, it's not gonna be the extra half-hour on my computer. It's not gonna be what I accomplish professionally. It's gonna be the quality of the relationships I made and the investments I made in them. It's going to be the courage with which I lived my life. So that's another way that it informs me...

I've been on a new professional journey for 5 or 6 years now, and it's been tremendously challenging, and it still is tremendously challenging. And when I sometimes want to throw in the towel or question myself too much, I do play the tape forward and from that old man vantage point look back and go, "Petty, how do you want to have lived this portion of your life?" And every time I ask myself that question, I go, "I want to remember myself as courageous, all-in, and just going for it--whatever that meant in that moment"...

Q: Brene Brown discusses "Foreboding Joy." This feeling of, ' uh, oh. This feels too good, something bad must be around the corner' What sort of questions would you ask one of your clients who might be experiencing this?

A: Foreboding joy is certainly a thing, and there are a lot of sources for it. Sometimes foreboding joy comes from people's story, because often it WAS too good to be true. And so it's important in my opinion not to dismiss anything that someone would bring up because if they brought it up it's important to them. But it's also important not to dismiss that as a lack of courage or the presence of timidity because foreboding joy can be real for someone, because maybe in their childhood good things were promised to them and then regularly not delivered upon. So they don't know what to count on, what is solid, what is real, what can I actually hope for and go for...

When I was about to get married to my wonderful wife, Charis, I was in many ways a wreck because I was afraid I was making a mistake, not because of her...but because I was always afraid that I was making mistakes. I was afraid to strike out on my own. And this was the biggest striking out on my own that I had ever undertaken, and I was kind of wrapped around the axle about it. And in my mind's eye, I had this vivid vision of me as a little boy--this didn't actually occur, but it was as if it had--running, pumping my fists as hard as I could and running as hard as I could and looking over my shoulder and asking my dad, "is this ok, is this ok?" So there was an element deep within me of suspicion that it was ok to make choices on my own and to pursue and break away and live the life that I wanted to live. And that's just been part and parcel of the putting back together that I've had to do as an adult is to continue to affirm that yes, it is ok to strike out, it is ok to pave your own way, it is ok to use the sweeping permission of adulthood to become who you'd like to be...

All that to say that foreboding joy is not to be taken lightly, and also it sometimes is a representation of Resistance, which is a word that I borrow from Stephen Pressfield, capital R Resistance, that shows up almost the very moment we decide to do something that #1 is exciting to us and is in some way more vulnerable and more exposing of our real dreams and desires than something has been before. So it can be a clever way of our psychology tricking us into not taking the next step...

Q: Who would you be and what becomes available in the absence of all your concerns? (a Peter Crone question)

I think I'd be quite a bit more fun than I often am. I think my family finds me to be fun and occasionally others find me to be fun. But because of the complexity of my psychology--and I'm not saying that my psychology is any more complex than anyone else's--but just the complexity I find in my own psychology and relating to myself and the anxiety I experience, it can limit my availability. It limits the availability of the Andrew within because there's a multi-tasking occurring. So, when you say "without my concerns," I immediately think without the presence of anxiety just sort of lurking and doing what it does, which is compromise me. It takes resources away that would otherwise be available. I think I'd be more carefree, I'd be more fun, I'd be sillier more often. I would be less careful. I would trust myself more completely. I would trust that I've got this, I can do it. That's a common thing for me, to not trust that I've got it or can do it.

(re: what would be more available) The thing that strikes me most is the silliness, the childlikeness, the carefreeness that occasionally I experience and very often I don't. That's sad to me, and I grieve that actually, and want very badly to make more of that available for my own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of others. I have a good sense of humor when it's available. I have a quick wit when it's available. Those that are closest to me know it best and others don't. And also, I think there would be more drumming, more surfing, more documentary creation. It's one of the pains of being a solopreneur trying to do stuff on my own and having more ideas than I'm able to execute on. And so one of my deep longings is to figure out how to assemble a team with me and around me who can bring to life more of the ideas and creativity that I have--and not only that I have but complement and supplement what I have to make it something even better…

Without the concern that literally consumes hours of resources just in the management of it--because there's a cycle for me of darkness and light, darkness and light, shrinking and expanding, shrinking and expanding. I think many can relate to that on some level. It's just an especially painful and compromising cycle for me. And maybe folks like me who work on their own and create on their own experience that more than others. I think Stephen Pressfield would certainly say that's the case. It's part of the artist's journey. And I think I am an artist and a creative person at heart, more than maybe just about anything else...

Tune in to the full episode for the whole conversation, including my answers to Natalie's other 3 questions:

• Your professional landscape is an ecosystem of sorts. Would you explain this process a bit of how one feeds the other and vice versa.
• Where would you suggest people to start in terms of getting after their life and living the way they are meant to live today?
• How would you like to be remembered? (This was the emotional part for me!)

Let the 95-year-old You Weigh In

Insight + Action = Transformation. It's a simple formula for human change. Put it to work in your own life right now.

What's one insight you gained about yourself from this episode? What's one thing you'd be willing to do with that insight today, before the magical window of opportunity closes?

Imagine yourself at 95, rocking on the porch of your final home, reflecting on the life you've lived--aware that Mortality is no longer just an abstraction but a very present reality. And imagine that from the moment you listened to this episode until that day on your porch, you committed to taking courageous and decisive action whenever you gained a new insight. And imagine that all those individual actions conspired over time to create a life you are immensely proud of with few if any lingering regrets. What does that feel like? How badly do you want that future?

Now, imagine the opposite scenario. Instead of taking courageous and decisive action, you may have reveled in the insights but shrunk away when the moment of action came. Your life's story is riddled with what could have been, unfulfilled dreams, and half-hearted desires. Relationships suffered when you avoided the hard conversations or decided to bang out more emails, and who you could have been will now never really be known. What does that future feel like? How badly do you want to avoid that future?

Those are two extremes to make the point, but there's a point to be made here nonetheless. TODAY is the day. Tomorrow never comes, but Death most certainly does.

Let the inevitability of your Mortality fill your sails with wind and your hearts with courage to be who you were made to be and live the life you were made to live.

Remember, you ARE going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

Extra Credit

To learn more about the Graveyard Group--where we tap into the power of our Mortality to become the people we were made to be and live the lives we were made to live on a weekly basis--visit digdeepwinbig.com/thegraveyardgroup. Links to other episodes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found below.

If this episode helped you, I'd love to know. Find me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

Here are links to other episodes mentioned in this one:

• Ep. 013 | Two Death Sentences and Still Surfing: An Assumption-busting Conversation About Letting Go, the Sneaky Downside of Hope, and Embracing Life's Necessary "Little Deaths"
• Ep. 018 | Life's 3 Big Questions: A Conversation with the Coroner
• Ep. 031 | How's the Conversation Going? Improving Your Most Import
• Ep. 036 | The Global Fish Pond Crisis: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
• Ep. 038 | Natalie's Story: Unconventional Answers to Life's 3 Big Questions

Connect with Tim Wohlberg and Valerie McTavish, the dynamic duo behind Podcast Performance Coach and a big reason why this podcast exists!

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It's no small feat to consistently think well of yourself--to regard yourself with warmth and compassion and respect, the same way you would regard someone else you care about. A lot of us wrestle deeply and daily with this challenge. And if you do, then you know how painful it can be. Therapists' full calendars and the existence of jobs like mine attest to this reality.

The implications of not thinking well of ourselves can be grave. But the impact of the opposite can be transformational.

In this episode, I'll share a recent chapter from my own story to illustrate the point, and I'll give you a tool to help you begin thinking well of yourself today.

Ski Day Downer

My wife was in the passenger seat next to me and our boys were bundled up, helmeted, and goggled in the backseat. In most ways, it was a normal snowy Saturday morning for our family as we made our way to the ski mountain for a few hours of fun together. In one way, though, this morning was a bit different than others, and it was about to take a turn for the worse.

For a day or so, a dark cloud had been hanging over me. It's been long enough now that I don't remember why, specifically, but I do remember that I was unusually dark and brooding that morning, struggling to stay afloat in a stormy sea of self-doubt and self-condemnation.

Earlier, I'd asked my wife if she'd be up for me processing verbally with her, but we hadn't found a good time in the midst of getting out the door. Now, as I drove us to the mountain, my internal pressure was mounting, and I made a decision I almost instantly regretted.

I turned to my wife and just started unloading all of the crap that had been building up inside of me. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I do know that it was full of "I can'ts" and "I'm nots" and "I'll nevers." And I do know that after a couple of minutes of spewing unfiltered negativity, I felt worse, not better, and clearly the same was true for my wife. My dark cloud had spread and now hung over her head, too. She had become a victim of the same toxic negativity I was subjecting myself to.

No. Bueno.

Those brief couple of minutes put a damper on the rest of the day.

The Upside of the Ski Day Downer

I regret the darkness that I brought into my wife's day on that occasion. AND...in hindsight, I'm also super grateful for what that moment revealed to me.

I've known for a long time that it's easier for me to think poorly of myself than it is to think well of myself. It's more instinctive to doubt myself than to trust myself and more familiar, sadly, to condemn myself than to affirm myself. I even have some awareness of where those unfortunate tendencies originated and why they persist. It's something I've wanted to change and something I've worked on. But WOW. Until that moment in the car, it wasn't clear to me just how invasive, pervasive, and destructive my negativity was. Frankly, it was appalling to realize.

That negativity hurts me, yes, AND it hurts others.

So with fresh resolve fueled by this new awareness, I set about to improve the situation. Insight + Action = Transformation. The approach I've taken is the tool I want to share with you today. We'll get to that in a minute. But first, let's talk baseball.

Which Base are You On?

If life was a baseball diamond--and I'm not a baseball guy, so apologies in advance if I bungle this metaphor--but if life was a baseball diamond, then all of us entered adulthood at different places on the diamond in terms of our ability to think well of ourselves. Some of us entered adulthood rounding third base on the way to home. Some of us haven't even gotten up to bat yet. And let's be honest, some of us are still toying with whether we even want to play this "adulthood" game at all. We're still outside in the parking lot looking for a cheap scalped ticket to get into the stadium or trying to prolong a tailgate party that has long since been over.

No matter which of those descriptions fits you best, both Nature and Nurture are at work. I touch on Nature and Nurture in more depth in Episode 035, Build Your Personal Owner's Manual: Understand Yourself Better, Enjoy Yourself More, and Live the Life You Were Made to Live. So for now I'll just define them briefly en route to showing how they apply to thinking well of ourselves.

Nature refers to innate qualities and abilities that influence how we operate in the world on a fundamental, hard-wired level. They're the default or factory settings that we're born with. With the help of the Myers-Briggs assessment, for example, I know that one element of my Nature, namely my personality, predisposes me to idealism. Sometimes, idealism is really helpful--enabling me to appeal to a higher standard and point the way to an even better future. But idealism can also lead to a pretty withering self-critique, if where I am is always and only seen as short of the ideal.

Some of you listening right now are picking up what I'm putting down as you recognize both the blessing and the curse of your idealism.

My innate idealism is just one example of how Nature has played a role in the negativity that developed within me over the years. There are other examples, of course, but for now we'll move on to the influence of Nurture upon our ability to think well of ourselves as adults.

Nurture, in the sense that I use the term, is essentially your Story. And for our purposes today, it's especially the part of your Story that occurred in your childhood and teen years. If Nature is the unformed lump of clay, then Nurture is the potter's hands--profoundly shaping how our Nature gets expressed. Our family, our friends, and our experiences--especially traumatic ones--have the most influence in this area. Were you in a supportive home environment, where you were loved for who you were more than for what you achieved? Or were your achievements or lack thereof a primary measure of your worth? Were both parents in the picture? Where were you in the sibling birth order? What social circles did you inhabit and move between? Did you feel smart or dumb in school? What labels did others give you? Respectful? Troublemaker? Promising? Hopeless? What mistakes did you make, and how did they impact your perception of yourself?

In short, as it relates to thinking well of ourselves, what messages about yourself did you receive from your Story? How adequately did the interaction of Nature and Nurture equip you to think well of yourself as an adult?

Which base are you on?

Taking Responsibility

Now, lest we're inclined to begin sliding down the slippery slope of victimhood--blaming our Nature and Nurture for any difficulty we have thinking well of ourselves--let's turn our attention to our responsibility in this area and what we can do to change things for the better.

As adults, it's up to us to get this "think well of yourself" thing sorted out. It's up to us to "parent" ourselves to maturity in this area. We are 100% responsible for thinking well of ourselves.

BTW, I've said it before, and I want to emphasize it again: Perhaps the greatest challenge of adulthood is assuming complete responsibility for ourselves and appropriate responsibility for others. I think many of the world's greatest ills stem from failures of personal responsibility. And the degree to which each of us is succeeding in this area is also the degree to which the world is changing for the better. It's no small thing.

So, if we want to think well of ourselves, and we're willing to take our responsibility to figure it out seriously, then what's next?

A Tool for Thinking Well of Yourself

That brings us to the tool I want to share with you today, the one I began to use more intently and intentionally after coming face-to-face with the darkness within on that snowy car ride to the mountain. It's elegant in its simplicity and tragic in its scarcity. No matter your Nature and no matter your Nurture, you can begin using this tool right now to begin thinking well of yourself.

The tool is Encouragement. To be encouraged is to be infused with courage. It's the way forward when we doubt ourselves. It's the way forward when we don't think we have what it takes. It's the way forward when we find ourselves spewing out "I can'ts" and "I'm nots" and "I'll nevers."

A friend of mine says that everyone is under-encouraged. I think he's right.

Two Ways to Use the Tool of Encouragement

There are two key ways to get Encouragement when we need it:

One--we can get it from others.

Taking responsibility to think well of ourselves doesn't mean doing it on our own all the time. It doesn't mean trying to be completely self-sufficient. It does mean, though, that we take responsibility for acknowledging what we need and, when we can't meet those needs on our own, enlist people and resources to support us in meeting them.

When you're thinking poorly of yourself and finding it hard to right the ship, let your need for encouragement be known to those who already care about you or who are trained to help you. Reach out to a friend, a family member, a mentor, a therapist, a coach. Sometimes, the origin of our difficulty--especially in the case of past trauma--really does need a professional's touch. Sometimes, we simply need someone who cares about us to help us see ourselves more clearly and break the grip of the negativity.

For example, I get encouragement on a regular basis from my wife, my parents (yep, even at 47), my coach, and the guys in the original Graveyard Group, where I'm a player-coach. They help me see myself more clearly and think well of myself again when I'm faltering in that area. They pick me up, dust me off, and send me back into the fray of life ready to go another round.

I know. It's not easy to let others know that we need encouragement, but it's essential if we're to take responsibility for thinking well of ourselves--for our own and others' benefit. And thinking well of ourselves sure is a more pleasant way to live.

The other way to get encouragement is to encourage ourselves.

Doing this involves both a shift in perspective and a change in behavior. I'm going to borrow heavily from clinical psychologist and author, Jordan Peterson, here, because his counsel is the best I've come across recently on the topic of encouraging ourselves.

First, let's look at the shift in perspective needed in order to think well of ourselves. One of the rules for life in Peterson's book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is "treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping." In the ski day story I shared earlier, I said things about myself that I would never have uttered to my wife or boys about them. I wasn't treating myself like someone I'm responsible for helping. Quite the opposite. If I wouldn't say those things to my wife or boys or someone else I was responsible for helping, then why in the world would I feel free to say those things to myself?

So, to encourage yourself, first begin treating yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.

Then, change your behavior. Namely, borrowing from another rule in Jordan Peterson's book, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Let me repeat that: compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

This is the behavior that became most important following the ski day debacle and my realization that something had to change. It's a discipline, really, because the familiar well-worn path for me is that of self-critique and self-condemnation. So to do the opposite takes conscious intention and, frankly, a fair amount of work. It's like developing a new muscle to counterbalance the over-developed negativity muscle. It takes time, it takes practice, and it feels kind of wonky at first. It can feel uncomfortable or undeserved or just really strange. That's ok, and that's normal if thinking well of yourself is a new concept.

The specific self-encouragement practice I've embraced is the one I offer to you, too. I simply take inventory of the ways in which I've demonstrated a virtue--like humility, kindness, or courage, of the things that have gone well recently--no matter how small they may seem, of the things about myself and my life that I'm proud of or thankful for. I do this in writing, in my journal, and the end result of any one instance of this practice of self-encouragement is a bulleted list of reasons to think well of myself. Sometimes the list is just a few items long, and sometimes there are 10 or more. The length of the list is less important than the intent behind it, the will to take responsibility for thinking well of yourself.

A particular benefit of doing this in writing is that you can go back and look at old entries to encourage yourself anew and track progress over time. The focus is on how far I've come as opposed to how far I still have to go. And that focus provides fuel for the road ahead.

Let's Recap!

Thinking well of ourselves is something that many of us struggle to do and I'd wager ALL of us struggle with some of the time. We're often much better at thinking poorly of ourselves. That's personally painful and also harmful to others, because our negativity infects those around us.

Nature and Nurture heavily influence which base we start out on in adulthood in terms of our ability to think well of ourselves.

The way forward is first to take full responsibility for thinking well of ourselves, then to infuse ourselves with courage by seeking encouragement from others and learning to encourage ourselves. With practice, you really can learn to think well of yourself.

It's good for you, and it's good for the rest of us, too.

You are the One and Only You. There's never been anyone else just like you, and there never will be again. You're here to fulfill purposes that are absolutely unique to you.

So remember, you are going to die. But you're not dead yet. Get after it, and start thinking well of yourself today!

I Can Help

I know firsthand the pain of thinking poorly of yourself, and it's my sincere hope that this episode has encouraged you and equipped you to begin thinking well of yourself--maybe for the very first time.

It would be an absolute pleasure to be a source of more encouragement for you. Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

I'm so glad you tuned in today. Don't forget to follow this show, and I'll see you next time on Andrew Petty is Dying.

Follow Andrew Petty is Dying & Leave a Review

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher.

If You Liked This Episode, These Might be Useful, Too

• Ep. 019 | The Cockpit is Yours: From Passenger to Pilot
• Ep. 022 | Tune Out to Tune In: Hearing & Heeding Your Inner Voice in a World Full of Noise
• Ep. 003 | How to Turn Your Imperfections Into Superpowers: The Key to Unlocking Your Unique Purpose

Check out Jordan Peterson:

• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (book)
• Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life (book)
• Podcast
• YouTube
• Discovering Personality (8-Module Online Course)
• Self-Authoring (online guide to understanding your Story and authoring your future)
• Understand Myself (personality assessment)

If environmental armageddon doesn't get us first, then a hostile nation's plans for global domination will. Maybe the Republicans will sink the ship and all hands will be lost. Or maybe it'll be the Democrats doing. What about AI--the potential for hyper-intelligent machines to take over the world and eradicate or enslave humanity? You thought COVID was tough? Just wait until the next super virus is unleashed by nameless, faceless, malevolent forces plotting our demise even as we speak.

Take your pick. There are no shortage of dire, doom and gloom scenarios to choose from these days. And the media and the internet serve up heaping quantities of it onto our psychological plates if we get in line for the 24/7 buffet.

I'm NOT saying, BTW, that there aren't genuine reasons to be concerned about the state of the world. There are--and, there always have been. In the modern digital age, though, it's possible to be aware of most of the challenges facing the world--or, at least, the existing portrayals of those challenges--and to be aware of them most of the time. That's infinitely more knowledge and awareness than any one of us can hold well in our hearts and minds or possibly act upon. And if we're not careful, it can lead us to despair, despondency, and inaction.

Where does that leave us, then? What CAN we do?

Good questions.

How do we change the world?

It's Simple, Actually

I'm not going to bury the lead here. Let's get right to the point.

To change the world, simply be the best "you" that you can possibly be.

Profoundly simple. And FAR from easy. If it was easy, more of us would embrace it and live it out.

It's also far from a new idea. "Be the change you want to see in the world" is a statement derived from ideas that Gandhi put forth. As is "if you want to change the world, go home and love your family"--that one derived from Mother Teresa's way of thinking. Today, in his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan Peterson sounds a similar note when he exhorts us all to "get our own house in perfect order" before we criticize the world or, by extrapolation, try to change the whole world.

It's not a new idea, but it seems to be one that needs to be revived in our hearts and minds these days. We forget. And we get swept up in the myriad of massive global concerns and take our eye off the ball right in front of us--the only ball that is really ours to carry. The ball of our One and Only Life, our unique path, and the purposes we alone can accomplish along that path.

We need to return to this simple idea and double-down on it in our own lives. As Natalie Niksa said in the previous episode, "we've lost our way because of all the shiny objects." And in returning to this priority, we'll revitalize our personal power, passion, and purpose and reduce our sense of paralysis and powerlessness in the face of all of the world's woes. Then, we can really get to work, right where we are, with what we have.

Breaking It Down

But what does it mean to "be the best you that you can possibly be," and how does that actually change the world?

It means taking radical responsibility for yourself. It means working your ass off to discover and express your unique self as fully as you can and bring your unique gifts into the world. It means dreaming the dreams that exist only within your heart and doing your damndest to fulfill them. It means doing the work to become the person you were made to be and live the life you were made to live. It means working your ass off to be the best spouse, partner, parent, neighbor, and employee, employer, or entrepreneur that you can be. It means dragging yourself over the finish line of your life utterly depleted AND utterly satisfied because you left it all out on the field.

For some, those efforts will yield global recognition and impact. For others of us, our efforts will only ever be known among those closest to us.

Guess what? The scope and scale of our impact is irrelevant and, frankly, none of our business.

It's not even knowable, in fact. We have no way of knowing how much of a difference our life will make--now, and in the years and generations to come. Our lives ripple into eternity, just like those before us ripple into ours.

Keep It Positive

Make no mistake, though: There's no such thing as a neutral or no-impact life.

We don't get to control IF our life will make an impact or know how much of an impact we ultimately make, but we do get to influence what KIND of impact we'll make. Will it be negative because we shrank back, didn't take full responsibility for our One and Only life, and failed to show up--and our absence was a loss for those who needed us to show up? Or will it be positive--not because we showed up perfectly all the time, but rather because we did our very best to simply show up, to bring the best of ourselves to this fleeting life, day in and day out?

Carl Jung said that the greatest burden a child can take into adulthood is the unlived life of their parent.

In a slightly sillier context but with no less relevance, in the Lego movie Ninjago, Lloyd the good ninja tells his dad, the movie's arch villain, that he ruined his life. To which his dad, Lord Garmadon, replies, scoffingly, "How could I ruin your life? I wasn't even there."

But How Does It Change the World?

If all of that at least makes a dent in understanding HOW to "be the best you that you can possibly be," then that leaves the question of how it actually changes the world.

When we take responsibility for being the best versions of ourselves that we can possibly be, then we change ourselves. When we change ourselves, we change our world--the little part of the world that we call our own. Our family life changes, our work life changes, our community life changes. Then, as our world changes, by definition the world changes as the ripples move outward from us at the epicenter.

Change your life...change your world...change the world.

That, my friends, is how we change the world.

Buckle Up, Buttercup

The good news is that it's so simple. Our primary focus becomes simply evolving ourselves. As I said at the beginning, though, it's far from easy. There's no journey more challenging. But there's also no journey more completely satisfying and worthwhile. And if you're looking for more purpose and meaning, this journey will fill that cup to overflowing.

So buckle up, buttercup, and get to work becoming the best you that you can possibly be.

And remember, you are going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

I Can Help

Maybe you're thinking something like, "how do I know if I'm becoming the best me that I can be? I'm not even sure who I am to start with." The good news is that who you are, the person you were made to be, and the life you were made to live are discoverable. I can help you with that.

Find me on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

BTW, this episode pairs well with episode 036, The Global Fish Pond Crisis, because it essentially offers a solution to the Global Fish Pond Crisis. If you haven't checked out that episode, and this one was meaningful to you, then I encourage you to do so.

I'm so glad you tuned in today. Don't forget to follow this show, and I'll see you next time on Andrew Petty is Dying.

Follow Andrew Petty is Dying & Leave a Review

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher

If You Liked This Episode, I Recommend These, Too

• Ep. 014 | Dare to Dream Again: The Antidote to a Mediocre Life
• Ep. 016 | The Question That Changes Everything: The Go-to Tool for Living the Life You Were Made to Live
• Ep. 022 | Tune Out to Tune In: Hearing & Heeding Your Inner Voice in a World Full of Noise
• Ep. 025 | The Contentment Conundrum: Cracking the Code
• Ep. 029 | Dragon Slayer: One Man's Tale of Heroic Life Renovation
• Ep. 035 | Build Your Personal Owner's Manual: Understand Yourself Better, Enjoy Yourself More, and Live the Life You were Made to Live

How do you answer life's 3 big questions--first posed on this podcast in episode 018 by coroner Rob Ryg: Where did we come from, what's this life for, and what happens next?

My guest in this episode, Natalie Niksa, reveals her answers to the Big Three. And in doing so, she challenges all of us to consider our own answers to those questions. Natalie's answers are far from conventional, and therein lies some of the gold in this episode. When we take time to view the world through someone else's eyes, we invite their perspective to challenge and change our own. And that, my friends, is a good thing.

There's way more to Natalie's story than we could ever hope to cover in one episode. And it is a WILD story. But we touched down in some of the more significant chapters of her story to see what they meant to Natalie and what they could mean to us as we continue to write our own stories. You will see the theme of Death and Rebirth appear and reappear throughout.

Meet Natalie

Natalie, her husband, Jon, and their son, Smith, live in Napa, CA, where Natalie and Jon own La Saison--at face value a world-class catering and food provisions company that they started in 2007. But when you look just a little deeper, you find that La Saison is really more like a vehicle through which Natalie and Jon bring their own brand of beauty into the world to enrich others and fulfill their unique purposes. In other words, it's about way more than the food. And a more recent addition to their menu is personal life guidance via the framework of Human Design, facilitated by Natalie. I'll provide contact info in the full shownotes for this episode for those of you who want to connect with Natalie and learn more about La Saison.

BTW, La Saison means "the season"--to live in the present and allow life to unfold, instead of resisting it. And you'll see this orientation to life bubble up everywhere in my conversation with Natalie.

Close Encounters with Mortality

The entry point into our conversation was a discussion of two encounters Natalie had with Mortality, separated by 16 years. First, at just seven months old, Natalie stopped breathing and turned blue due to (of all things) an ear infection. Her dad, then in medical residency, scooped her up and ran across the street to the hospital, administering mouth-to-mouth the whole way.

Then, at 17, Natalie was literally run over by a truck on a bike ride with her brother. Her "whole left side was broken," and she had major head injuries. Remarkably, on this occasion, too, her dad was first on the scene to assess the situation and begin treatment.

Connecting Dots in Hindsight

Natalie finds meaning in those two encounters with Mortality through the lens of hindsight. "I was always one foot in and one foot out," Natalie says--unsure on some deep level if she could handle "humanness." But her encounter with Mortality at 17 came after a fundamentally transformative moment on an expedition in the snowy mountains of Colorado. On that expedition, in one magical moment of stillness, Natalie became aware that "this is all temporary." When she returned home, she began to slip into her old pre-epiphany ways. The run-in with the truck shook her out of that, though, and two months without the ability to walk literally stopped her in her tracks and allowed the changes she experienced in Colorado to become more fully integrated within her.

From that second near-death experience onward, Natalie has been all-in.

Some Key Takeaways from Natalie's Story

• Each of us is a unique puzzle piece in the huge jigsaw puzzle of humanity.
• Self-discovery is perhaps the most important job each of us has because each of us has a specific spot to fill in the puzzle of humanity and a specific role to play. Commit to a lifelong practice of self-discovery.
• When you're on the path that you're meant to be on, magical things happen. We tend to get off-course when we are seeing the dangling carrot or shiny object of someone else's life that's not our own path. Our own path will always keep us feeling complete.
• To hear our inner voice--the voice that whispers the truth of our existence to us and sets us on our unique path--we have to "create time and space to be with ourselves."
• Until we're in a position of really being able to take care of ourselves, we really are not ready to be in service to others.
• And more...

There's so much meat on the bone of this episode. Tune in to the full episode for the full impact.

What About You?

Our unique stories and our unique purposes in the world are inseparable. Natalie's story is another demonstration of that truth.

How well do you know your own story? I mean, really KNOW your story, like you know your best friend, your spouse, or your significant other? You may be able to identify the dots on your timeline, but some of those dots from the past are wreaking havoc in your present and blocking you from the future you could have because you don't yet know them intimately. And often, it's because they feel like enemies to be held at arm's length rather than friends to be embraced. Until we embrace them, they will remain enemies indeed--standing defiantly if not secretly between us and our full potential.

Natalie's story landed differently for each one of you listening. That's awesome. It's part of the mystery of stories--that one story can affect so many people so differently and in just the way each person needed. And, I hope this episode has also affected each of you in one shared way: I hope Natalie's story has encouraged you to become even more intimately acquainted with your own Story so that, like Natalie, you can fulfill even more of your potential in the world--for your own enjoyment and the world's benefit.

Natalie reminded me of this quote from Carl Jung in the days leading up to our recorded conversation, and it's a perfect bow to tie on this episode:

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

I Can Help

We won't fully understand our story without the compassionate, curious support of other people. They see our Story and us within it in ways that we simply can't. I can be a compassionate, curious partner for you, helping you to become more intimately acquainted with your amazing story so it can inhibit you less and empower you even more moving forward. What are you capable of when you're more completely you?? That's very much worth finding out.

Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

Remember, you ARE going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

Connect with Natalie

Email | Instagram | Facebook | Website

Follow Andrew Petty is Dying & Leave a Review

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If You Liked This Episode, I Think You'll Like These, Too

• Ep. 018 | Life's 3 Big Questions: A Conversation with the Coroner
• Ep. 022 | Tune Out to Tune In: Hearing & Heeding Your Inner Voice in a World Full of Noise
• Ep. 036 | The Global Fish Pond Crisis: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It

"I didn't when I coulda, and now I can't when I wanna." An elderly man once spoke those words to a client of mine. The man was obviously saying a lot in that one statement as he reflected back on his life. But at least one of the things he was acknowledging is that he didn't enjoy himself as much as he could have when he was still able to do the things he enjoyed. What a bitter realization!

How often do you play? You know--do something just for fun. Do something that doesn't have anything to do with work.

In this episode, I show you how to set yourself free to play more so that unlike the old man, you can look back and say, "I'm so glad I did when I coulda, because now I can't when I wanna!"

Kids 1 - 0 Adults

Kids are really good at playing. It's their default setting, you might say, and a top priority on any given day. We adults? Not so much. We're very often all work and no play. We may want to play more or even know that it would be good to do, but when push comes to shove, a lot of us bang out a few more emails or do yet another project around the house.

I'm not arguing that, like kids, play should be our TOP priority as adults. I don't think that's true at all. You might know a few adults for whom play seems to be a top priority at the expense of the other things in life that matter, too.

But I am arguing in favor of just a bit more play in the midst of all of our adulting. Some of you reading this right now have been wrestling with this very thing.

My Own Experience

In fact, I'VE been wrestling with this very thing, so this topic is close to my heart. My wife and I have been in an intense chapter of life renovation for the past 9 or so years. It's required a lot of blood, sweat, tears, perseverance, and resilience. Thankfully, we're enjoying the fruits of our labors today more than ever before. We're actually living the dream we first began to dream 9 years ago. But play has often fallen way down on the list of priorities in the name of pursuing our dreams.

In Ep. 017, Busting the "Balance" Myth: A Better Way, I proposed that growing in our ability to manage life's many tensions is better than trying to achieve and sustain the ever-elusive, ever-fragile "balance." In my case, for the past 9 years, I've allowed the tension between work and fun to favor work more often than fun. More recently, though, I've realized that it's time for the tension to favor play a bit more, too. So, I'm taking steps to let play take up a lot more space on my calendar, so to speak--to let an attitude of playfulness have more air-time.

For example, this past weekend, we spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons with our boys and some of their cousins at a cool little spot on the river that runs through town--tubing, hunting for crawdads, building dams, and just goofing off. We all had a blast, and we made some memories. I want more of that! You can hold me to it.

What Qualifies as Play?

Play doesn't have to be river outings, of course. Play is simply whatever is fun for you, whatever gives you energy back...and ISN'T part of the work of life. It's not as if play is unproductive, though. I actually think it's productive in some of the most important ways, and I touch on that in Ep. 032, Reimagining Productivity: A Path to Greater Freedom and Fulfillment.

How to Play More

So if you're realizing that you'd like more play in your life, here are three essential ingredients in the recipe for more play:

First, Give Yourself Permission to Play. This one is a big deal. Many of us lack internal self-permission as adults. Repeat after me: I can do what I want, when I want, where I want, how I want. One more time: I can do what I want, when I want, where I want, how I want. Do you really believe that? Because it's really true. That's the great permission of adulthood. So, if you really want to play more, first give yourself permission to do so. You CAN play more simply because you WANT to play more. Period.

Second, Summon the Courage to Play: This might sound strange at first. But hear me out. When we play, we briefly put down the many concerns and nagging uncertainties of life as a human on planet earth. And we focus our attention on the present moment and the potential for fun that it contains. I think that many of us fail to play as often as we could because we aren't willing to put down the concerns and uncertainties of life even for a moment. Because that could be the moment when the thing we most fear happens! Or what if I don't return that client's call right away? I could lose their business! So, instead of putting work down, even just briefly, we stay connected all the time in an attempt to stave off undesirable future outcomes. And all the while, we miss out on fun that could be ours right here, right now.

If you really want to play more, summon the courage to play. Life IS fraught with peril and uncertainty. Play anyway!

And third, Embrace Your Mortality as Motivation: Let the inevitability of your Mortality compel you. When you breathe your last, will you be more glad that you fired off that last email or that you rough-housed with your kids? Will you be more glad that you booked that extra work trip or had a new adventure with your son? Australian Nurse Bronnie Ware wrote a book called The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, in which she chronicled the regrets of the dying that she cared for as a palliative care nurse. #2 on the list of top regrets was, "I wish I hadn't worked so hard."

Think about that. REALLY think about that. Because it's too late once the Grim Reaper comes a'calling.

It's up to you.

Simple, But Not Easy!

Though on the one hand, this approach to play is simple, it's far from easy. There's a time for everything. A time to work and a time to play. It's not always obvious which is the better choice in a given situation. And even when we feel persuaded that play is a good choice, actually making that choice is another thing entirely.

So give yourself grace as you strengthen your neglected "play" muscles. In time, with practice, they will provide better counterbalance to your well-developed "work" muscles and allow you to manage the tension between work and play even more effectively.

Let's recap. To set yourself free to play more, first give yourself permission to play. Then, summon the courage to play. And finally, embrace your Mortality as motivation.

Remember, you are going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it, and don't forget to play!

I Can Help

Sometimes, we need help with one of more of those three ingredients in the recipe for more play. We lack objectivity about ourselves, and the support of a trusted partner can create the insight we need to get unstuck.

I can be that partner for you.

Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

Three More APiD Episodes to Help You Play More

These three episodes of Andrew Petty is Dying will help you in your ongoing quest to play more:

• Ep. 010 | Life is a House With Many Rooms: Would Your House Pass Inspection?
• Ep. 016 | The Question That Changes Everything: The Go-to Tool for Living the Life You Were Made to Live
• Ep. 019 | The Cockpit is Yours: From Passenger to Pilot

I'm so glad you tuned in today. Don't forget to follow this show, and I'll see you next time on Andrew Petty is Dying.

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This episode is a little different. I'm going to throw out a theory I've been chewing on for a while to see how it lands for you. If I'm at all on the mark with my theory, then you and I are in the midst of a global identity crisis with huge individual implications.

Go with me on this, and I'd love to know what you think.

Two Stories, One Point

John's Story

John was born in 1952 in a small town in Michigan. His mom managed the homefront, his dad was an accountant, and he had two younger sisters. In keeping with the prevailing sentiment of the day, his mom and dad favored stability, predictability, and peace above all else since WWII was still painfully if not distantly visible in the rearview mirror. And John's dad was a combat veteran. Gratitude for the simplicity of small-town American life was a staple of John's family's ethic, and dreams of bigger and better things weren't exactly frowned upon, but they weren't encouraged either.

John went to school with the same 60 or so kids from K-12, watched the same regular TV programming as everyone else, and was glad to get a job at a local print shop when he graduated from high school. He liked art and design, and this seemed like a reasonable way to get a bit of that in his work while at the same time taking his place among the ranks of the responsible and productive.

John eventually bought the print shop after 20 years at the company and the establishment of his own family, and though each decade brought with it its own set of challenges in the world at large, John had a sense of who he was and what he did in the world. He was John, the son of Tom and Sally, from a small town in Michigan. He was a husband, father, business owner, and engaged member of his community. He was aware of the wider world and interested in its affairs, but he didn't spend much time concerning himself about things that didn't affect his immediate day-to-day or threaten to do so.

On the whole, John was content to be a decent-sized fish in a small pond in the middle of Michigan.

Alex's Story

Alex was born in 1995 in the same small Michigan town as John. The town was bigger when Alex was born, but not significantly so. It had simply grown the way that towns can when there aren't specific causes for decline but neither are there particular reasons for a boom. His mom was an IT manager who worked from home and his dad was a VP with a national healthcare provider. Alex was an only child.

Alex changed schools 4 times and moved to different neighborhoods twice in his K-12 years--the result of his parents' concerns about the quality of the education he was receiving and proximity to the airport for his dad's business trips. So, Alex had several different groups of friends over the years but became increasingly less social as the years wore on--fatigue from the social turnover taking its toll. By the time he was a sophomore in high school, smart phones and the proliferation of social media made it easier to interact from a distance and meet people outside of his hometown that he found more interesting. He was aware of the vastness of the world and the almost infinite options awaiting him. There was so...much...more out there than this little town had to offer.

By the time his senior year rolled around, Alex was counting down the milliseconds until graduation--when he was free to leave the stifling smallness of his hometown and explore new horizons. Maybe he'd visit his buddy Alex in Oregon, whose dad grew marijuana for medical use, or his online crush Lisa in Miami. His gaming buddy, Yoshi, had invited him to visit him in Tokyo. That would be amazing. The possibilities were endless.

Fast forward to the present day, and Alex's still a relatively young man at 26, but he's beginning to feel some internal pressure to figure some things out. He's lived in 4 different cities since high school graduation--all thankfully much different and in his opinion way more interesting than his hometown. But eventually, each city got a little old, or he had a hard time connecting with new people there, or the tech job he'd landed went away because of down-sizing or right-sizing or an acquisition. He's feeling a bit adrift. He's spending more and more time on social media--fantasizing about achieving the stardom and notoriety of a Gary V. or a Joe Rogan and peering into the lives of hundreds of people he doesn't know but whose lives look more interesting than his. This isn't helping. It creates a chronic sense of he's here and "they" are way over there--living in a magical land of financial ease and personal certainty. The gap seems to be widening with every passing day.

Plus, it appears to him that the world is beginning to crumble around him. Racial unrest, global pandemics, dishonest politicians, and environmental armageddon are just a few of the big things that threaten to do the world in any day now. At least, that's what he's hearing in the media. And can the media be trusted? If not they, then how does he get reliable info about the state of things? He feels like he ought to do something about at least one of these things. But which one? And what can he possibly do as just one guy? He feels increasingly like he's being swept along by a tidal wave of horrible inevitability that he's powerless against.

Alex is a small fish in a global fish pond. It's terrifying, and it's paralyzing.

So What's the Point, Petty?

Hopefully, the juxtaposition of the portraits of these men from the same town but with very different experiences of the world illustrates the theory I want to share with you. Here's the theory, simply stated to make the implicit explicit:

I think that most if not all of us are suffering at the hands of what I'm calling the Global Fish Pond Crisis. We're all susceptible to some version of Alex's experience in the world.

I actually think it's a big reason that people like me have a job doing what we do. People feel adrift in a global fish pond and need help making sense of their place in it.

But What IS the Global Fish Pond Crisis?

Here's what I think is happening: When the whole world is at our fingertips 24/7 and the old ways of forming an identity aren't adequate anymore, then it's completely up to us to catalyze our identity--a term I first heard from Jordan Peterson--and stabilize it in the midst of a global pond churning with other fish trying to do the same thing. In John's case, geography and associated cultural norms provided reliable, local boundaries to his fish pond and formed a foundation for his identity. He was one fish among 20,000, not one among 7 Billion as we may feel ourselves to be today.

But perhaps the biggest problem with the Global Fish Pond Crisis is that we're not aware that it exists.

We're tempted instead to think that we're just not cutting it. We may be aware of various degrees of psychological pain and suffering caused by it--like in Alex's case--but we're misattributing it to our own laziness or incompetency or lack of worth. This is a case in which I think many of us are truly being victimized. And that's why I bring it up. Because if this Global Fish Pond Crisis is actually a thing, then exposing it and its insidious effects on us means we can stop being victimized by it and start doing something about it.

We can go from unwitting victim to victor and find our place in the vast global pond in which we now swim.

In an age where few of us are born into small local ponds anymore, we have the opportunity to appropriately claim a small part of the global pond for our own--a part of the pond small enough to actually make a difference.

How to Rescue Ourselves from the Global Fish Pond Crisis

I think the way forward lies in each of us doing our best to assume even more complete responsibility for ourselves. To concern ourselves with those things that we can influence, to get our own houses in order, so to speak, and operate as productively as we know how right now, right where we are, with what we have. Staying zoomed out to the global view too much of the time leads to overwhelm and, frankly, I think it's a cop-out because we then blame the global situation for why we've failed to sort ourselves out. Because what can one person do when the world is burning down around us? That's victim stuff right there, and we're all susceptible to it in one way or another.

Zoom out every once in a while, sure--but zoom right back to your own here and now, and determine to do what you can right where you are. And I don't mean do what you can to fix the world. I mean do what you can to become the person you were made to be and live the life you were made to live. I think that when we do that, we actually fulfill the many desperate needs in the world better and more quickly, anyway.

Start Today

If this idea is scratching an itch for you--if you resonate with the idea of feeling like a tiny fish in a global pond--then resolve to do something about it in your own life right now. These four episodes of Andrew Petty is Dying will be especially useful as you take next steps to rescue yourself from the Global Fish Pond Crisis:

• Ep. 019 | The Cockpit is Yours: From Passenger to Pilot
• Ep. 022 | Tune Out to Tune In: Hearing & Heeding Your Inner Voice in a World Full of Noise
• Ep. 025 | The Contentment Conundrum: Cracking the Code
• Ep. 035 | Build Your Personal Owner's Manual: Understand Yourself Better, Enjoy Yourself More, and Live the Life You were Made to Live

Remember, you are going to die. But you aren't dead yet. So get after it!

I Can Help

One of my favorite things in the entire world is helping people solidify their identity in the world so they're better able to become the person they were made to be and live the life they were made to live. I can help you do that. I can help you escape the grip of the Global Fish Pond Crisis.

Find me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me. And I'd love to know what you think of this Global Fish Pond Crisis idea, too!

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What kind of human are you, and how do you know? Who were you MADE to be, and what kind of life were you MADE to live? These can feel like big, daunting questions. Maybe you've actually been seeking better answers to those questions but feel like you've reached a dead end. Or maybe to some of you, they don't feel like particularly useful questions or even very interesting.

Whatever camp you're in, in this episode I hope to make a convincing case for the value of building your personal owner's manual, and I'll give you the tools to do it.

Ray's Story

Ray pushed back from his desk and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes, rubbed them with the palm of his hands, and slowly opened them again. The lights of the city glowed and blinked beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass of his corner office on the 42nd floor. He glanced at his watch. 11:30. He knew he was tired, but seeing how late it was made the tiredness sink into his bones. A half-eaten poor excuse for a cobb salad sat wilted on the desk to his right, a dollop of dressing dangling off the edge of the plastic to-go container and threatening to leap onto the affidavit beneath it.

His phone screen lit up. "Love you. Miss you" said the first part of the text from his wife. "Lasagna's in the fridge. Oh, almost forgot--Blake scored a goal tonight."

3 weeks of late nights and working weekends. And this wasn't the first time--not by a long stretch. It seemed like every client was now a "big client" whose case demanded this kind of TLC.

Ray let out a long, slow sigh. Then, with a ferocity that startled him, he sat up and slammed his fist onto the pile of papers in front of him. Poised over his desk, his fist throbbing from the impact, out of the corner of his eye Ray saw the dollop of dressing make good on its threat and land on the affidavit.

Something had to change.

Tanya's Story

Tanya dug her paddle into the water to guide her kayak through the last of the rapids. As the river widened, the water slowed and flattened, and the roar of the rapids subsided, she peered back over her shoulder to see how her friends were faring. Two more kayaks trailed behind her, and the whoops and hollers of their occupants were all Tanya needed to know that her friends were doing just fine. She turned back around to face downriver, rested her paddle across the bow, and allowed her kayak to drift with the current. Canyon walls towered over her, and in an instant the late afternoon sun dropped below the rim of the canyon and put Tanya in deep, cool shadow. She closed her eyes and drank in the stillness.

Or at least, she tried to. Usually, these moments were blissfully peaceful for Tanya. But this moment was different. She was aware again of a nagging restlessness--something that had popped up a few times before in moments of stillness on this trip--on the drive out, and around the campfire. It confused her, because up until this moment, she'd always been able to count on river trips to tamp down the restlessness that plagued her back in the real world, where she was dutifully applying her chemistry degree in a hospital lab. But now the restlessness had tracked her down and invaded her river sanctuary.

In that moment, a deep sadness crept into Tanya's heart with the knowledge that the river was no longer a reliable refuge. And a new, even more troubling sensation made itself known: desperation. If not the river, then where could she go or what could she do to find relief from the restlessness?

Her eyes popped open and widened. The familiar lines and shadows and contours of the river and the canyon now took on a strangely foreign feel. She blinked, and her eyes welled up. Something had to change.

Their Story = A Familiar Story

On the one hand, Ray's and Tanya's stories are fictitious. On the other hand, though, they're not really, are they? They're representative of thousands upon thousands of other people's stories of stuckness, confusion, and quiet despair. Stories of stuckness, confusion, and despair occurring beneath a veneer of outward "okayness" and a semblance of success. Maybe you found YOURSELF in one of these stories somehow.

Why a Personal Owner's Manual?

In my personal experience and my work with my clients, I've learned that without fail, an inadequate understanding of the kind of human we are, who we were made to be, and the life we were made to live is substantially complicit in creating stuckness, confusion, and despair in our lives.

And more often than not, it's unnecessary stuckness, confusion, and despair--a predicament that can be resolved by updating our personal owner's manual.

I say "updating" our personal owner's manual, BTW, because for most of us, it's not truly that we lack an owner's manual altogether. It's just that it's jammed way back in our mental glovebox--not easily accessible, neglected, pages bent, some pages missing, and others incomplete. Relegated to a place of irrelevance and relative uselessness in our hearts and minds. It's been assembled through a hodge-podge of life experiences and vague lessons- learned--but very little of it is useful and actionable in a conscious, intentional, purposeful way day-to-day.

As a result, we are more passive than active, more reactive than proactive, more unconscious than conscious, and more likely to find ourselves in Ray's or Tanya's situation in one way or another. And if we do find ourselves there, less likely to know what to do about it. We may reach for the old owner's manual stuffed way back in our mental glovebox, but its contents aren't adequate to the task of helping us know how to deploy ourselves more effectively in order to get a better result.

Even with a decent personal owner's manual, we find ourselves in unknown territory often, of course--for at least two reasons: 1) Life is uncertain and much of it is simply out of our control, and 2) with the help of a useful personal owner's manual, sometimes we intentionally choose to deploy ourselves in new and unfamiliar environments in the pursuit of something we want. For example, if I want to become a published writer because the contents of my owner's manual point me in that direction, then I'll have to put myself in new situations and encounter new challenges in order to become one.

The Benefits of a Personal Owner's Manual

Here are three key benefits of having a useful personal owner's manual:

• First, you understand yourself better. Which means that you can intentionally design your life around the kind of human you are vs. who you're not and what you're especially good at vs. what you're not. You learn to see yourself as a certain kind of human suited better for certain environments and pursuits than the many others available. Which allows you to focus time and energy where you'll get the best bang-for-buck. For example, if I was a car, I might be a late-70s Toyota Land Cruiser. I won't get anywhere very fast, but if you need me to climb a windy, solitary, rutted mountain road, I'm your guy. By comparison, if you wanted me to go toe to toe with a ferrari on a race track...well, technically I'd be able to drive the course, but I'm not going to break any records or give the Ferrari any actual competition, and I might burn up my engine if I pushed it.
• Another benefit of a useful personal owner's manual is that you enjoy yourself more. Meaning, you literally learn to enjoy YOU more, AND you deploy yourself in the world in ways that are more consistently enjoyable and rewarding and less often unproductive and unfulfilling. To use the previous analogy, I've come to enjoy that I'm a vintage Land Cruiser rather than wish that I was a Ferrari. And I spend as much solitary time as possible on the less-traveled roads in life, enjoying the scenery and slowly connecting more dots of meaning together as I go. Imagine if I mistakenly believed I was a Ferrari and tried to perform like one in life? Or knew that I was a Land Cruiser but wanted to be a Ferrari--and tried to perform like a Ferrari anyway? It's just a matter of time before the wheels come off or the motor burns up.
• And finally, you live the life that you were uniquely made to live. You find YOUR path amidst the almost infinite array of options available. This is a big one, because it benefits not only you but the rest of us, too. You get a life filled with more meaning, purpose, and contentment, and we get the very best that you have to offer in the world. And since you're the One and Only You--there only ever has been and only ever will be one person just like you--then you've got a difference to make in the world that only you can make.

There's one more big reason that a personal owner's manual is so incredibly helpful in our day and age, and I'll unpack it more in the next episode. Tune in to learn why the "global fish pond crisis" is wreaking so much havoc so easily on so many of us in the modern world.

Okay, but what actually IS a personal owner's manual, and how do you create one? Let's dig into that.

What's in a Personal Owner's Manual?

I use a simple three-part structure for creating a personal owner's manual. And it even alliterates, which is handy. The three parts are Nature, Nurture, and Now. Let's look at each part more closely.

Nature is simply what you came into the world with--your "default settings," so to speak. In my experience, surprisingly few of us have a good sense, at least in any quantifiable or actionable way, of what our default settings are. I focus primarily on two of our default settings in creating the Nature part of our owner's manual: personality and natural abilities. And two assessments create the foundation for understanding our personality and natural abilities.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an awesome tool for gaining deeper insight into the personality style we were born with. It describes your personality in four different areas and according to one of 16 different possible personality profiles. (My Myers-Briggs profile is INFP, BTW--which may not surprise you if you know something about Myers-Briggs already and consider what I do for a living.)

Think of your personality as prescription eyeglasses through which you view everyone and everything in the world. The prescription is unique to you, and though others may have the same 4-letter Myers-Briggs profile, no one else expresses that profile in exactly the same way as you. Every personality style has its own set of inherent strengths and weaknesses. And when you're more aware of what those are, you can design your life to play to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. You can understand your relationships with others better and identify specific ways to improve them--especially in the areas of normal and natural differences between you and others that so often create problems but when identified can become sources of strength. I see this transformation from conflict around normal and natural differences to more powerful partnerships because of the differences regularly in my own life and in my clients' experience. It's one of the things I love most about deepening our understanding of our default settings in the area of personality.

The Highlands Ability Battery is an amazing tool for gaining deeper insight into the abilities that you were born with--as opposed to skills acquired along the way. It gives you objective data about how well and how quickly you solve problems, how you learn, how far into the future you naturally project, how well you are able to order your thoughts and share them with others, among many other things. Taken together, the results give you a compass for navigating the road ahead even more intelligently, enjoyably, and productively--prioritizing those things that play to your natural abilities rather than work against them.

You can get started on the Nature part of your personal owner's manual right now, if you want. Go to MBTIionline.com to take a self-guided version of Myers-Briggs for just $50 and about an hour of your time. You'll need someone to administer the Highlands Ability Battery for you. I can do that for you, or you can go to highlandsco.com to connect with someone.

With your innate personality and natural abilities better in hand, you've got a really solid foundation of understanding about the kind of human that you are. Land Cruiser? Ferrari? Interplanetary space vehicle? Whatever you discover, it sure will be good to know because then you can choose ideal rather than adverse operating conditions for the human that you are more often. And that means you're well on your way to enjoying yourself more and living the life you were made to live.

In the fictitious cases of Ray and Tanya, the Nature part of their personal owner's manual would help them understand the professional paths they're especially well-suited to--as opposed to the ones they're currently on that are causing problems--and how to manage their energy more effectively, among other things. But Nature isn't the whole story, and adding the next part of the personal owner's manual would help Ray and Tanya begin to make better sense of why and how they've arrived where we found them.

The next part of the personal owner's manual is Nurture. Basically, this is your Story--from as early as you can remember up until the present day. And it's distinct from Nature--things that you had no ability to influence--because even though things have happened to you that you had no ability to control, you have also been a conscious, active participant in your Story, writing it even as you lived it and living it even as you wrote it.

The goal of the Nurture part of the personal owner's manual is to understand and redeem as much of your past as possible for present and future benefit. It's a remarkable if not understandable part of the human condition that we so often live in relative ignorance of the impact of our Story on the person we've become and spend a lot of time trying to escape the especially painful parts. But I think that doing this is very much like cutting off our nose to spite our face. Because as you may have heard me say before, I believe that our Stories and our Purpose in the world are inseparable. If our Story holds clues to our unique Purpose in the world, then knowing them intimately and mining them for as much meaning as possible is an extremely useful undertaking.

For example, in episode 003, How to Turn Your Imperfections Into Superpowers: The Key to Unlocking Your Unique Purpose, I share how after many years I was able to accept the Anxiety-ridden chapter of my Story. In turn, this acceptance led to greater enjoyment of the man that I am today, a genuine sense of pride in the battle that I've waged all these years--as opposed to a chronic sense of shame and inadequacy. And it also led to this podcast and the creation of the Graveyard Group masterminds--unique ways that I express my Nature and my Nurture as a coach. These things wouldn't have come into existence without this revisitation of my Story.

In the cases of Ray and Tanya, developing the Nurture part of their personal owner's manual would help them each understand better the forces and choices in their Stories that led them to the moments where we found them. And with greater insight, they would increase their perception of the options available to them based upon the clues that their Stories provided as to their unique Purposes in life--options to leave behind, adapt, or embrace parts of their Stories that they'd long neglected or resisted.

In your case, developing the Nurture part of your personal owner's manual can begin in earnest right now. First, on the mental and emotional levels, begin with a decision to view your story as a goldmine of untapped insight into who you are, how you became who you are, and how clues from your past shine light on the Path that lies ahead of you.

Next, on a more tactical level, begin to review your life in 10-year increments--without judgment, with as much honesty and courage as you can muster, and engaging curiosity and objectivity as your guides. Write down the significant events from each decade and how they impacted you. Don't rush this process. Let it be a process that's initiated and kept open in your heart and mind--a new way of engaging with your Story in a progressively revelatory way. Gradually, as meaning from the past is brought forward into your present, you become an even more skilled author of the chapter you're writing right now.

Clinical psychologist, author, cultural lightning rod, and Jordan Peterson created a very reasonably-priced online tool called Self Authoring, "a series of online writing programs that collectively help you explore your past, present and future." I haven't used it yet, but I plan to, and there's huge benefit in using a pre-fab resource to overcome the inertia of starting out on your own into the murky past.

The third and final part of your personal owner's manual is Now. Now equals values, interests, experience, opportunities, and obligations. It's like emptying your pockets out onto a table in front of you to see what you've got on hand. Only these things aren't just loose change or car keys. Instead, they're current realities that will shape how you deploy what you've discovered in the Nature and Nurture phases of your personal owner's manual update. Values, for example, might influence whether you shoot for that partner position at your firm, in light of the fact that an even higher value than professional success is making memories with your family. This could be part of Ray's predicament--an internal values war. Interests are those things that just naturally call to you or pique your curiosity. What do your interests tell you about how to deploy your Nature and Nurture even more enjoyably and productively in the future? Your Experience is the sum of the knowledge and skills you've acquired over the years. In what ways has your experience especially prepared you for certain kinds of things more than others? Opportunities are both those that have presented themselves to you and those that you have created. They're the proverbial birds-in-hand. And Obligations are those outstanding commitments that impact how and when you're able to operationalize what you discovered in your consideration of Nature and Nurture. Sometimes, Obligations that first look like obstacles can, in fact, to quote Ryan Holiday of The Daily Stoic, become the way.

So that's a quick and dirty description of the personal owner's manual and how to begin updating yours right now. It's simple, on the one hand, but it's not easy. Bear in mind that it's as much a mindset as it is an actual process, an attitude of self-discovery that opens up new veins of Insight that can be converted into Action to yield Transformation.

You Need a Partner

You can certainly make a lot of progress on your personal owner's manual flying solo. But it's my conviction that we all need one or two trusted, confidential, skilled partners to help this work realize its potential in our lives. All three parts of the personal owner's manual need an external, more objective perspective to be seen for what they really are. And the magical moment when potential becomes reality is the moment we decide to apply real-world Action to our Insights. Without external support, we're more likely to stop at Insight than we are to move on to Action. If we know all about the car we own because we've read the manual from cover to cover but never actually take it for a spin, our knowledge is of nearly no value whatsoever.

Once you've determined that updating your personal owner's manual is useful and have begun that process, you've embarked on a strategic adventure of self-discovery that will make a difference now, can last a lifetime, and will help you know with confidence that you gave it all you had while you were still above ground and breathing. It will help you understand yourself better, enjoy yourself more, and live the life you were made to live.

Remember, you ARE going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

Let's Build Yours Together

If you're turned on to the idea of updating your personal owner's manual, then connect with me to learn more about working together 1-1 or something new I'm creating, called the Personal Owner's Manual Academy. The Academy will take you through the three-part Nature / Nurture / Now process with the support of a small group of your peers and my input as your confidential guide.

Find me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

Follow Andrew Petty is Dying & Leave a Review

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If You Liked This Episode, I Think These Will be Useful to You, Too

• Ep. 003 | How to Turn Your Imperfections Into Superpowers: The Key to Unlocking Your Unique Purpose
• Ep. 016 | The Question That Changes Everything: The Go-to Tool for Living the Life You Were Made to Live
• Ep. 019 | The Cockpit is Yours: From Passenger to Pilot
• Ep. 025 | The Contentment Conundrum: Cracking the Code

Additional Resources & References

• The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph (Ryan Holiday)
• Jordan Peterson YouTube Playlist: This is a compilation of short Jordan Peterson clips on various topics that I found really useful.

Can Death bring you back to Life?

If former NFL pro Dennis Franks' story is any indication, then the answer is 100% yes. And his story is packed full of hard-won wisdom for becoming the people we were made to be and living the lives we were made to live.

First, Rabbit Trail to a Big Idea

I met Dennis Franks through a mutual friend--or even more accurately, a friend of my parents back when I was a little boy in Boone, NC. Serendipitously, Bonnie Church had gotten curious about what I was up to and looked me up online--where she found this podcast. And almost overnight, she became an unexpected, very welcome, and very generous source of encouragement and inspiration. She also happens to have co-written a book with Dennis and his good friend, former Philadelphia Eagle's teammate, Vince Papale. And Bonnie realized that Dennis' story was a good fit for Andrew Petty is Dying.

Which is how we ended up here today, with former pro football player-turned-network marketing success story, Dennis Franks, as the guest on this episode.

I share this backstory because it highlights a big idea that I think is useful for all of us to remember: When we commit to becoming the person we were made to be and living the life we were made to live, and we persevere in that work--as I've been trying to do through this podcast, for example--cool things happen--like getting reconnected with Bonnie and striking up a friendship with Dennis. That's the technical term, BTW--"cool things." Truth is, you never really know what will come of it all, but that's part of the adventure. And each new serendipitous moment creates the potential for more. It's the best kind of compounding interest.

Now, Back to the Program Already in Progress...

Dennis Franks is a primo example of someone who has persevered in becoming the person he was made to be and living the life he was made to live. Along the way, he found success and fame in the NFL, and he's achieved remarkable success in business post-football. But it hasn't been all rainbows and unicorns. Far from it, in fact, and Dennis has fought tooth and nail for every bit of success he's attained and to learn the lessons available from his failures. And a close encounter with Mortality woke him up to what mattered most and kicked his butt in gear big-time after the fumes of football fame had dissipated.

We dig into all of that and more in this interview. The internet can give you a version of Dennis' story--and it's one that's available to anyone who cares to type in "Dennis Franks" in the Google search window. But I was especially interested in the REST of the story. What's Dennis Franks really all about? What makes him tick? How does an encounter with Mortality impact a man who, for a while at least, seemed to have it all?After all of his ups and downs, moments of fame and seasons of ridicule, what wisdom for life does he have to offer to all of us?

To set the stage, though, here's the cliff's notes version of what can be learned online about Dennis.

Introducing Dennis Franks, Interwebs-style

From humble beginnings in Pittsburgh--the son of a steelworker and a German figure skating champion--Dennis had a noteworthy college football career at Michigan and went on to 5 years in the NFL, first with the Philadelphia Eagles, then with the Detroit Lions. Along with Vince Papale, about whose story the film Invincible was made with Mark Wahlberg in the starring role, Dennis had a hand in setting the Eagles up for their first superbowl appearance in 1981. A rough patch after football was followed by Dennis' discovery of the world of network marketing, a business he has excelled at ever since. In fact, early on he became one of the few to earn over $1 Million in annual commissions through a home-based business. Today, Dennis is executive vice president of Market America Worldwide, a product brokerage and internet marketing company that specializes in one-to-one marketing and social shopping. Market America provides a system for entrepreneurs to supplement their income and gives customers a better way to shop.

Dennis' book, The Last Laugh: Vision to Victory outlines seven keys to making your dream a reality--Vision, Valor, Vehemence, Veracity, Vitality, Vigor, and Victory--and illustrates them at work through his and Vince's stories and firsthand accounts from the likes of Dick Vermeil, Jim Harbaugh, and others who have had extraordinary success in their fields. Like Dennis, The Last Laugh is direct, no BS, imminently practical, and full of wisdom. If you want to get from here to there, The Last Laugh will help you. It's helped me.

Dennis and his wife, Nancy, live near Charlotte, NC. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.

A Date with Death

The entry point into our conversation was an episode in Dennis' story back in the 80s that changed the course of his life forever. Dennis' "15 minutes of fame" as a 5-year NFL pro are over. He's discovering that a resume of "moving people for a living" doesn't automatically land you a good job, and he's begun to move in some unhealthy circles where partying hard was a way of life, not just a for-fun kind of thing.

One day, after a 36-hour, cocaine-infused bender, Dennis found himself staring Death in the face. He literally felt like his heart was going to explode. A good friend--now his wife, Nancy--stayed with him until his body began to resume more normal functioning. But the impact of that experience was there to stay. Here's Dennis in his own words:

"It was a huge change in my life...resetting, almost, and trying to understand that I had something to live for, and not to be this waste. Don't be that one-and-done star, and now that you can't have that anymore, it's over. It couldn't be, because I was 29 years old, and I had a lot of years left to live. That was a critical time for me...Everything changed because of that near-death experience. There was a realization that there had to be more."

Rebirth

Amazingly, Dennis dropped his cocaine addiction cold-turkey and began to re-learn how to live. As a 300lb. single guy with no job, he had to fundamentally rewire his relationship with food and alcohol. Physical wellness became priority numero uno. Since then, Dennis has returned to and maintained his high school playing weight, and physical wellness is a top priority--and shows up in the Victor's Code as Vigor and Vitality.

Gradually, Dennis' life-saving encounter with Death and the wholesale life renovation that followed led him into the world of network marketing. But one more unexpected speed bump was just up ahead.

The Past Comes Back to Haunt Him

After being clean for seven years, the FBI paid Dennis a visit out of the blue:

"I was making it in life, and I was handcuffed and taken out of my office in Monterey, CA, only to go to court back in Philadelphia because my name was in the dealer's book when he got busted. And the DA in Philadelphia said "here's a Philadelphia Eagle that might be able to spill on other Philadelphia Eagles. Let's go after him." And the scariest part of this was, they wanted to give me 15 years; they were going after maximum sentence. And I'm going, are you kidding me, I've been clean for almost seven years and you're coming back to me with a conspiracy to distribute?"

Dennis was fortunate to ultimately receive only a one-year sentence of community service and stays at a halfway house every weekend. And he learned sobering lessons about the importance of the choices we make, the environments we put ourselves in, and the people we surround ourselves with.

Wisdom from the Figure-Skating Son of a Steelworker

We rewound the tape farther back in Dennis' story to his childhood, where we explored how figure skating entered the picture and why it exited suddenly when he entered high school, the impact of his childhood--and especially his father--on the man he's become today, and where his immense passion and drive for everything he undertakes came from.

Here are some of the nuggets of wisdom that emerged from the rest of the conversation:

• "In life, it's so important to always have people around you that care about YOU, who you are, people who are better than me. I'm not afraid to be the person who doesn't know everything. I prefer to be the person who can learn everything on a daily basis."
• "I want people to understand that you're not born a superstar. It's a choice to utilize your God-given talents. Are you willing to spend the time to become what you were meant to be? So many people don't have that vision. That's a big part of that vision to victory concept, because I want everyone to realize--you can if you believe you can, and if you're willing to do the things necessary to make that happen."
• "Winners never lose, they just learn."
• "There is no balance in success."
• "I believe in taking calculated risks...I'm not asking you to be foolish, but I am asking you to take a calculated risk so you can be all-in once you make the decision. The reason people fail is because they don't go all-in because they're afraid of failing. A calculated risk to me is somebody who has weighed out the best-case / worst-case. And if you can deal with the worst-case, why not go full-on? And if you don't go full-on, then you really didn't want it anyway, and it's not gonna happen." (This nugget emerged from our discussion of football as a metaphor for life--really fun and enlightening part of the conversation.)
• And tune into the full episode to hear:
• Dennis' advice for how to find your Path and Purpose in life…
• How he measures success now, at 67…
• And his response to the question, "If you knew you were going to die in exactly five years, what would you start doing differently today?"

Landing the Plane

Fear gets a bad rap. We're always trying to overcome it or get rid of it. But if Dennis' story is any indicator, then the value of fear is hard to deny. The fear of Death--maybe even more specifically, the fear of not living the life he was capable of living--motivated Dennis to quit cocaine cold-turkey after a season of aimlessness post-football and turn his life around. That watershed moment set him on a very different path than the self-destructive one he'd been headed down. I'd call fear a literal lifesaver in Dennis' case, not an enemy to be overcome.

And as Dennis said in the full episode, if you're willing to face your fears, you can get through them. Lise Leroux rang the same bell in episode 006, The Nine Lives of Lise Leroux: One Woman's Mind-blowing Tale of Living With a Terminal Diagnosis. I think a key to tapping into fear's potential power in our lives is teaching ourselves to become its boss. I unpack that further in episoe 005, How to Become the Boss of Your Fear: Bravery-building to Live With More Guts and Gusto. And that's precisely what Dennis did--he summoned the courage to overhaul himself from the inside-out when an encounter with Mortality filled him with fear. He's been looking ahead and pushing ahead in life ever since.

What a gift that fear was to Dennis!

Making Dennis' Story Relevant in YOUR Story

Are you holding back in life--not going all-in, as Dennis said--because of some fear or another? Take a page from Dennis' playbook. Consider the best and worst-case scenarios. And if you can deal with the worst-case scenario, then why not go all-in? On their deathbeds, people regret not going for it far more than they regret mistakes made when they did go for it. And the world needs YOU bringing your very best into the game of life, full-tilt, all-in, charging ahead with guts, gusto, and purpose to become the person you were made to be and live the life you were made to live.

And remember, you are going to die. But you're not dead yet. So get after it!

I Can Help

I can help you charge ahead with guts, gusto, and purpose to become the person you were made to be and live the life you were made to live. Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, visit my website, or email me.

Go Here to learn about Graveyard Group masterminds--where we make time each week to invest in your life's most important work.

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