How I Overcame Worry and Anxiety

The following true story might shock my friends—even cause some to jettison me from their network.

After all, much of what I’m about to share with you is controversial and, in most places, illegal.

But, if you’ve ever suffered through a painful transition in life, career or business, I think you’ll find this true story interesting, enlightening and maybe healing.

One simple turn of the calendar catapulted me to age 55. It felt as if my face was pressed against a glass ceiling. For the first time, I was truly lost about what to do next.

Until that is, I met a deca-millionaire my age who just a few years earlier was on a path paved with addiction to drugs, sex, and alcohol. He was lumbering toward suicidal self-destruction, yet he turned his life around in one, life altering night.

For me, life has been a great experience. I grew up in the buckle of the bible belt. I have a wonderful Christian family, a few good friends, and a rewarding 33-year career as both employee and, for the last fifteen years, as entrepreneur.

After selling one of my businesses in 2015, I took a couple years off and helped my parents through their final season of life. In addition to mom and dad, I also experienced the agony of losing four more family and friends the same year. The most painful were a three old daughter of a good friend, who drowned in a pool, and a niece who took her own life.

Attending so many funerals in such a short time shook me like a head-on collision with my own mortality. It left me gripped by anxiety and groping for an answer to, “Is this all there is?”

Maybe you’ve asked the same question too, at some point in your life, when you felt alone, disconnected, or unfulfilled.

The deaths and birthday milestone also left me begging for clarity; “What should I do with the rest of my time on this planet?”

The Discovery

Stuck in an airport in December 2019 and binge-watching YouTube videos about overcoming anxiety and worry, I discovered a story about a financially successful yet mean, miserable, maniacal, unfulfilled, suicidal millionaire.

Gerry and I couldn’t have been more different. But his amazing story taught me a lot about life and business.

Gerry had taken a trip to Costa Rica for a plant medicine therapy session as a last resort before taking his own life to end his misery.

He would experience a re-birth of sorts. An overnight healing of his drug and sex addictions and would later invest millions to create Rythmia Life Advancement Center in Costa Rica to provide the same amazing healing experience for others.

After several videos and phone calls, I was booked to visit Rythmia for a week and meet Gerry Powell personally.

Some visit Rythmia and partake in their four indigenous ayahuasca plant medicine ceremonies to cure serious opioid addictions, smoking, alcoholism, sex addiction, depression and anxiety, PTSD. Many seem to experience these scourges loosen their grip and release them from years of imprisonment—after just seven days.

My seven days with Gerry and his team were some of the most challenging, yet the most rewarding of my life.

I too, had a mystical experience, and was bathed for over four hours in an ineffable, indescribable energy.

It was so intense that I wept with joy. I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and awe for life itself.

I knew I was in the presence of the force that created everything. The force that holds closely my parents and all those I lost that very difficult year, in a place where we came from and will return.

Later that night a gentleman approached me and introduced himself as Will, a dentist from Nashville.

“Are you religious?” he asked.

Not sure of his intentions, I simply responded with a question of my own.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you believe in God and Jesus?” he asked with urgency.

“Yes, absolutely” I said with a smile.

“I’m an atheist, or at least I was.”

“I saw Jesus last night, and now… I don’t know what I’m going to tell my atheist friends.”

He turned and left.

Since returning home from Costa Rica, I don’t worry like I used to. Even with all this pandemic and mayhem, while I hurt for our nation and the world, I’m at peace. It sounds strange, probably. It feels strange, too. But it feels good.

As you struggle through this unprecedented and difficult period in history, take time to slow down, stop the mental chatter of you ego mind, and listen to what the force that created you, what God, or whatever or whoever you choose to call it, has to say about what is happening.

I think you’ll hear it say, “Everything is going to be okay.”

If you’d like to hear my entire Rythmia story, send me a message here on Linkedin and I’ll share a private link to a video I recorded just after I returned.

May you be in a constant state of victory,

Dale