I lost my way. Yes, and that’s a good thing. I was on a contrived Super Stu Coach path. An image of me more than what I really wanted.

It took breaking an artery in my leg, 30 nights of waking up with “knife in the leg” pain, and five weeks of being “on my back” – to get the memo.

I had a lot of shadow to shed. Much forged identity to dissolve.

The irony is my work is to help others work through shadow and develop authentic identity.  And yet, it makes complete sense.  I had to go back to the well for more knowledge.

I thought my divorce had done the work. A three plus year epic journey of getting out of a 20 year marriage with the woman I still loved. My recent book tells that story.

And then the injury came on June 23, 2018 – a crash into a bike rack with my upper thigh.

Just prior to that moment, I had been pumping up my coaching career, with a book release and super-charged high-ticket client retention program. Building up an image as a teacher, coach, and author that was not authentically me. Something critical was getting lost in the hustle of building the business side of my work.

I was lost in questions like:

• What good is a coach if nobody knows he exists?
• Are you tired of chasing clients?
• How can you make 40, 50, even 100 thousand dollars per month and work less?

And then, after emergency surgery, 30 hours in the hospital, and weeks on my back, all my coaching pursuits seemed no longer worth pursuing.  All that mattered was wellness.

This all happened, I believe, in order to shave another layer off my ego and further dissolve my identity.  I’m intrigued at how I get these wake-up calls.

And yet pain and hardship are only wake up calls for those of us who listen. Who are open to something bigger than ourselves. Who access strength, faith, and vulnerability as portals to greater understandings of self.

In pain or duress, we are served well to ask…

• What does my soul want from me through this?
• What do I need to learn here and now?

And then we may come out –  yes, wiser.

But when we’re in the thick of it, we often lose our way.

After weeks of pain and immobility, I thought, I have no clue what I need to learn from all this. I just want to be done with this shit. 

It peaked one night as I took 30 mg of oxycodone, 800 mg of Ibuprofen, and got stoned – to relieve “11” intensity pain.  The hell with soul-knowledge or self-awareness.  Take me to the opium den and knock me out.

The next morning I woke up, stunned that I was willing to give myself away so easily. I had lost a part of myself in the transaction. And yet when we lose something, we may find something else.

I feel lost, I said to myself, but not despairing.

I stayed with the question – What do I need to learn? What do I need to….? It kept me close to my soul. It always does.

I felt happy and proud for having made it through the night, even as despair knocked at my door, saying – you’re screwed, if you have another night like that, you’ll die, you’d be wise to fear it, go to ER now.

To fear is to be human. But to live in fear is to abdicate from one’s power. Check out or tune in? The choice is ours always.

Victor Frankl spoke to this in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

How about you?

• How do you choose your way?
• What is life asking of you now today?
• What do you need or want to show up for?
• At work, in marriage, relationship, parenting, and life?

Comment blow and share please.

For me, time will tell. I am trusting the unknown.

And I am just happy to be writing, walking and even hiking on the phenomenal trails outside my home.