High Achievers can Suffer Collapse,
and Still Never Choose to Evolve.
Outside a Bar in New Zealand with International Rugby Coaches
Steve Hansen, Scott Johnson, and the guys on the British and Irish Lions Tour.
Most high achievers think rock bottom forces change.
It doesn’t. Identity does.
This photograph, taken on my 3rd British and Irish Lions Tour in 2005,
illustrates how we, as high achievers, can survive sustained pressure and collapse,
with our identity intact.
During a discussion at our office in my late twenties.
One of my business partners mentioned my blocked sinuses,
my relationship with alcohol, and my lifestyle.
Once again, he’d been discussing my health and well-being with others outside the business,
which I deemed grossly unprofessional.
With the almost constant stress, my body was flooded with adrenaline and cortisol.
I found our office environment increasingly difficult.
Being with friends in environments where I felt safe (body),
usually drinking alcohol, alleviated the pressure.
This is where I made a critical error: the fight for control in our business
became inseparable from my fight for autonomy.
I decided I’d prove him wrong and stopped drinking abruptly,
which led not only to the effects of the unmanaged withdrawal from alcohol (Delirium Tremens),
but also to the effects it had on my dysregulated nervous system,
which had lost its coping mechanisms.
Some might class hallucinating spiders and snakes crawling over your legs, body,
and face for days, while being on an intravenous drip,
as rock bottom, but perception/perspective is everything.
New Zealand on the Tour… weeks later… what a trip!
Changing my behaviour,
based on a highly charged emotional experience, lasted days.
This is why I discuss… IDENTITY first.
Nothing changes until your identity does.
Everything else is a passenger in the process.
If you look, my face is yellow, almost golden.
This is obviously the result of my inner state and subsequent lifestyle choices.
Be they conscious or unconscious.
Nothing about the experience had impacted my SYSTEM.
To make me think – Enough!
So – once again, I reverted to what I knew best.
CONTROL – FORCE – HUSTLE – GRIND.
Override my thoughts and feelings about my health and wellbeing (Biology),
as I lived in alignment with my beliefs and values.
This decision led to intensified fighting for control in my business,
with my family, and anyone else who thought they could control me… LIFE itself.
BURNOUT — DEPRESSION — COLLAPSE — ICU.
You cannot be switched on constantly, in overdrive, living in sympathetic dominance,
which becomes a functional freeze…
One foot on the accelerator, the other on the brake…
Using Coping Mechanisms to “Deal” with Life.
Where many “experts” will tell you your prefrontal cortex, the executive, decision maker,
turns off during sustained stress and burnout, it’s another cliche; they’re wrong.
Yours probably won’t, you’re a high achiever, you’ll use your intelligence to override your biology,
which means you’re weaponising it, using it against yourself; however,
your brain will be lacking coherence,
which means you are lacking coherence,
not working as a whole.
Living this way is unsustainable – It will lead to Dis-Ease.
Epigenetics says that your perception of the environment
upregulates or downregulates the expression of your genes.
Your perception of yourself is of paramount importance.
At 40, as I was lying “BROKEN” in a hospital bed,
with potential brain damage, little to no muscle mass, and unable to walk unaided.
I integrated my previous experiences and created a vision of my new Identity, who I would be in life.
The version of me who entered the hospital was completely different from the one who left.
I then proceeded to live into my vision.
You don’t have to be on your knees to change something.
Either way…
I’m living proof you can create something sustainable and incredible.
What do you want your new identity to be?
Who must you become to witness it?
The Conscious Edge | Insight.