Can a person find balance when they need to make extreme changes? This is where I’m going in this post.
Those words came to me as I laid down the other night after another hard workout… “Everything comes with a price…” It was Wednesday night, Day 16 of a streak dating back to August 29th where I’ve hit my Fitbit goals, and my body was worn out. It was yet another victory in a series of battles I’ve had in recent days where my emotions wanted me to quit yet again. It’s been almost daily the past week that I’ve come home from work entertaining the idea of taking a night off from the elliptical, and on this particular evening, as tired as I was, I was thankful I resisted the temptations to take a break because momentum can be a hard thing to establish, but an easy thing to lose.
My daughter is the lead trainer in a larger gym in the area, and she often mentions the importance of “active recovery”, incorporating some form of exercise that allows the body to recover from more intense workouts. I do listen to her… about as much as she listened to me when she was a teenager… Frustrating when that happens isn’t it daughter?
But I do want to mention here that I believe there is a place for “taking a break”, for allowing the body to recover. However, I am looking through the lens of “addiction”, and as I work with people who struggle with addictions, I cannot help but see how my problems are very much like their problems. Taking a break right now is not the time…my current change is very fragile and it needs to be firmly established before I start thinking like that.
GETTING MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT MY MOUNTAIN
As I consider the message of “Climbing Mountains”, I’ve been leaning into the idea I must be specific about the mountain I’m climbing. Writing a book is a mountain I want to summit… and plan to summit in the future, but without any hesitancy, the mountain that has stood before me since the mid 1990’s is the mountain of obesity.
As I’ve likely said in previous posts, I spent the better part of two decades weighing in the 330’s and 340’s, and nothing about my patterns at that time could argue against me being in the 350’s or 360’s here 5 years later had something not changed. Looking back over the past 20+ years, I made countless half-hearted efforts to lose weight, but until late 2018, I was never able to break the 325lbs barrier. It seemed that when things got a bit tough… or inconvenient, I’d lose my focus and determination… to put it bluntly, I’d quit on myself, drifting back into my past ruts. Apparently, the price tag was too expensive for the outcomes I desired… I was unwilling to pay at that time. A result from those choices back then was an identity I did not want…but one I was completely responsible for creating… I made the decisions in each of those moments when the bill arrived… it was too expensive and now (2018) I had to live with the reality that I was an obese man limited in the kind of activities I would be able to enjoy in life.
But that was before late 2018…
TRYING TO FIND BALANCE IN THE MESSAGE
Most of us can think of casual changes we would like to make in our lives.
- I would like to read more…
- I’d like to take more road trips, add more adventures…
- I’d like to spend less time distracted by my cellphone or other technology…
- I’d like to become a lifelong learner… be more intentional with my spare time…
- I’d like to play the guitar like Kirk Bennett… Who? Never mind, but he is good.
Many of us may come up with examples of changes we would like to make that will deliver different outcomes. To some degree, I will look at these as casual changes for casual outcomes. They’re desirable outcomes, but there isn’t a sense of urgency to get there. For a person in this place, overall, they consider that their life is good, but they still want to grow, so they consider minor adjustments to obtain desirable outcomes. If you’re there, I applaud the decisions you’ve intentionally made to get to where you are… those circumstances don’t just happen… we make decisions that put us in those places. I can say that in some areas of my life, I am right there with you, and I enjoy my life. But there are some darker areas of my life where I’ve not experienced a “win” … and regardless of how good my life ultimately is, there is a mountain of obesity standing out there that I cannot ignore or avoid if I want more from my life. It’s a mountain that must be summited.
So, I come to the question… “How do we enjoy radical change without having a mindset that embraces radical choices?” I won’t argue that it can’t happen, but personally, I do not see how a person can successfully obtain radical changes with a casual mindset about the choices they need to make.
I will fully blame this mindset on the experiences I’ve had as a probation officer. I’ve had the luxury over the years of getting real with many of my clients, and I can’t say I remember one of them who wanted to be an addict. Sure, they could be defiant in the face of people telling them they needed to get clean, but when their defenses were down, and they truly spoke from the heart about their battles, in my 25 years of working with people in the court system, I cannot remember one who “wanted” to remain an addict. I know many who did not want the process… but I know of none who did not want the result of sobriety.
Getting free from the prison cell created by addiction is a fricken battle with no place for compromise. Those people who truly want to be free from the chains of their drug or alcohol know there is no room for justifications and rationalizations, and they’ll be the first to call bullshit on someone waffling about the choices they have to make. Those two characters (Justification and Rationalization) are simply the steps back into relapse. The people who are truly ready to be free must make hard choices… radical choices. They have to sever relationships (and sometimes it’s family), some have to quit jobs because the drugs are all too accessible in their current work environment, one of my clients who was gang-involved is prepared to leave the state once his probation is over because he cannot escape the connections he grew up around, and now, in his early 30’s and with a young son, he knows he has to make some radical decisions for his family.
I know my probation caseload is filled with stories of people fighting serious demons in their life. But take away the needle, the bottle, the pill… take away the legal system and the fear of incarceration, and we could fill in the blank with circumstances that “normal people” (whatever that means) are fighting with that lead to significant consequences of their own.
- The diabetic fighting to decrease sugar in their diet.
- The person with heart issues trying to make choices to secure quality of life.
- The person stuck in a dead-end job who dreams of having so much more in this life… but to get that “more” they must be willing to make some sacrifices.
- The person in an unfulfilling relationship who questions what is on the other side if they make a radical decision.
- The kid who wants to fit in with their peer group but secretly holds dreams that would require them to go a different direction from the group, and at that stage in life… it’s a huge deal!
There are so many places for so many of us to see that if we want something radical out of our lives… it’s going to require that something radical take place within our lives… it’s going to take a radical courage to make changes that take us on a different course.
Kent’s story screams in my mind as I think about radical change.
AN EVENING WITH AN INTOXICATED FRIEND
Kent had beaten alcoholism. I saw a brief glimpse of who Kent was free from the bottle…and he was beautiful. But within perhaps a couple years of his sobriety, the story took a sad turn as Kent returned to the prison cell of alcoholism, and eventually, the sad story came to a tragic ending.
On the specific night of this story, my friend Rob told me Kent had called asking for help. He was in a motel in my town, but was too drunk to assist us in narrowing down which one he was in.
To fast-forward through this story, we eventually learned the hotel he was at and through much encouragement, we convinced Kent to get out of bed and open the door to allow us in. Through much conversation and negotiations, Kent agreed to be taken to Detox, but to get there, he first had to be medically cleared at the hospital ER.
It was late in the evening when we arrived at the parking lot of the hospital. I can still picture the glow of the ER sign and the lights coming from the front doors across that dark parking lot: it seemed so close, but we would soon realize just how far away it really was.
At this point, Kent got out of the vehicle, apparently saw the reality of what those ER doors symbolized and decided to have a change of plans. He no longer wanted to go to Detox and refused to walk into the ER. Again, fast-forwarding through much effort put into getting Kent the help he needed, the evening ended with us frustrated and returning Kent to his hotel room where he demanded to be taken, but the experience left an impact on me.
As I said earlier, there was a tragic ending to Kent’s story. He passed away within several years of that night. I believe he was found in an alley in the downtown area of a larger city close to us.
Kent wanted help… he knew enough to know how miserable his circumstances were, but sadly, he was unwilling to pay the price required to walk through those ER doors and into Detox.
Kent’s story is tragic. He died in his alcoholism. But sadly, there are people who remain imprisoned in their own circumstances right now because they are unwilling to pay a price for the radical change they want in their own lives. They want small investments that cost them very little to lead to large payoffs.
I guess they could call those lottery tickets… and someone has to win…. at some point… right?
WANTING MORE FROM YOUR DAY? It’s going to cost you…
We want more from our day, from our week, from our month, but we don’t get more time. We get 24 hours in a day, we get 168 hours in a week, we get 15 hours between workdays and 63 hours between 5pm on Friday and 8AM on Monday (for those with the 8-5 Monday through Friday schedule). If we want more time for those habits and routines that lead to different outcomes, something has to give.
When making changes, it’s easy to pay the initial invoice that comes in. We cut certain behaviors from our daily routine that have little value and easily slide a new preferred habit into its place. But with each decision, the sacrifice becomes more difficult. At some point, we must begin choosing between preferred routines that are harder to give up… We start making deals with ourselves. We justify; we rationalize (have I told you about those two characters?); we make promises to ourselves. Our past patterns testify against us, our word is not good… we are not to be trusted! Our past patterns offer hard evidence to show we will eventually break those promises.
Can I be candid here? I see it constantly with my clients struggling with addiction… if you’re rationalizing and justifying a behavior that you’re having trouble giving up, either you need to find another place to look for the time you are trying to create, or you’ve hit that price you are unwilling to pay for the change you said you wanted in your life.
It may sound harsh, but it’s a dose of honesty we need to have when dealing with ourselves. It doesn’t mean we will never be willing to pay the price, it simply means that right now, we may not be willing to pay it, and being honest with ourselves in times like this may actually allow us to take a step back and focus on potential issues that are holding us up from moving forward.
WRAPPING THIS UP
I just got back into the 280’s again. It feels good, but it’s a long way from where I want to be. I enjoy the victory, but there really is no time for celebrating. I’m preparing myself for the decisions coming down the road I will have to make if I want to hit the 270’s by October. The holidays are on the radar, and we all know what that means around the office… food!
But in dealing with this mountain, I also must address why I’m back here again. I was as low as 267lbs a couple years ago. Why am I here again? This is all a part of the mountain I am climbing.
Like I said at the beginning of this post, there are other mountains I wish to summit. Losing radical weight, taking radical steps by looking into double knee-replacement surgery, making a radical effort to rehab, and getting back out on the trails with my daughter; dare I say, getting to the top of Longs Peak again… we’ll see about that one; putting myself out there by writing a book…a dream I think I began carrying around with me in the early 1990’s… these are all summits I desire to climb, and each one will present a requirement for some change that will cost me something… and each time, I will have to decide how much I’m willing to pay.
I hope you were able to find a place to relate to this post. My motive for writing is certainly not so I can hear myself talk. I hope you as a reader can find a place to be challenged, motivated, and inspired toward the summit of the mountains that stand before you.
See you at the Summit!