We Become What We Choose

Christmas Eve 2019 marked my 365th day of living strictly on liquid nutrition and sleeping in a chair due to a rare disease. To put the situation simply,

Starvation + Sleep Deprivation = No Easy Day

I learned that living in a constant state of ‘want’ by ‘denying the flesh’ can result in extreme physical, mental, and spiritual transformation. How? By embracing a certain set of attitudes. Choosing our attitude wisely in the deepest depths of discomfort is literally everything. As Hugh Downs penned,

“A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.”

Enduring that Hell of starvation, sleeplessness, and psychological turmoil rekindled my faith, calloused my mind, hardened my resolve, and encouraged me to question the limits of human potential. My darkest days served as a mental, physical, and spiritual awakening. For that, I am grateful. I’ve discovered that ‘gratitude’ is the ‘attitude’ that unlocks the doorway to living a life of abundance…even when everything is stripped away…As John Milton wrote,

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

In the business world, I serve organizations as an ‘Agent of Change’. One of my favorite quotes on ‘change’ is from Socrates,

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

When I was diagnosed with Achalasia, I ‘chose’ to embrace that same ‘attitude’ towards personal growth. My life would never be the same. To me, the sooner that I could ‘accept’ the fact that I could no longer swallow food and ‘got to’ live on liquids, the quicker I would be able to improvise and adapt to the famished and uncertain path set forth on my horizon.

I have rarely looked back. Carrying ‘Yesterday’ is the heaviest of burdens…and when you cannot eat or sleep, one lacks the strength to lug much of anything. To climb higher up a mountain, you must be willing to let go of your current hold to reach for the next…and the tallest mountains are never climbed alone. I’m grateful for everyone who came alongside me on that journey.

Surprisingly, being deprived of the ability to eat is less of a physical trial and more of a psychological voyage into lonely isolation. After all, food is a catalyst for human connection.

I remember watching multiple seasons of ‘The Walking Dead’ in early 2019 while recovering from pneumonia. I literally resonated more with the zombies than humans. I thought I might lose my mind so many times during that year of being surrounded by every cuisine imaginable with the inability to enjoy a single bite. The smell of food was an intoxicating combination of ‘Hope’ and ‘Hell’…

Yet, like any hungry & sleepless ‘zombie’, I kept ‘walking’ through that seemingly endless valley of suffering. As Epictetus reminds us,

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

We can either ‘surrender’ as victims to our circumstances…or ‘take’ full responsibility for becoming a product of our ‘choices’.

I’ve realized that life is less about the hand we are dealt, and more about how we ‘decide’ to play the game. Ultimately, we become what we ‘choose’ to endure.

Never forget that each night turns into day, every storm runs out of rain, and all seasons change. In time this pandemic can and will be eradicated so long as we ‘choose’ to work together with patience, discipline, endurance, empathy, compassion, reverence, logic, reason, and the right attitudes.

Together, we must let the old ways die to build a brighter tomorrow. My daily mantra while living on liquids was,

‘Let go of the endgame and stay focused on the process.’

Remain steady. Fall in love with the methodically boring. This too shall pass. We are all growing fatigued and must choose not to let this pandemic starve us of our humanity.

Trust me, immense strength is gained from the madness we survive. Embrace gratitude. Strive for growth. ‘Be hungry for greatness’. Accept that yesterday is gone. Welcome today as a platform for heroic possibilities and live it as if it were your last!