Think Again

My Conversations With Dad were great – sometimes deep, but often simple and casual. We hit on deeply personal topics but also shared what our favorite Netflix binges are, what everyone is up to, the weather, chatting with the kids, etc. It was so normal.

Except, for one huge metaphorical elephant left to handle.

Just as I had my physical elephant sitting on me that I was eating my way out from under with the surgeries and recoveries, I had a personal elephant to address – communicating with my mom, putting history to bed, and creating a new, healthy relationship moving forward. 

Before adding my mom to my Conversations With Dad, I had some more learning and discovering to do. I dug deeper into my libraries of listening and reading.

By this point I had added the following relevant podcasts to those I previously listed:

• Flow Research Collective Radio
• Battle Ready
• Habits & Hustle
• Good Life Project
• The Daily Stoic
• The School of Greatness
• Cleaning Up The Mental Mess
• Small Things Often

My book library added the following relevant books:

• Limitless – Jim Kwik
• How To Be Here – Rob Bell
• The Art of Resilience, Strategies for an Unbreakable Mind and Body – Ross Edgley
• The Daily Stoic – Ryan Holiday
• Fighting Forward – Hannah Brencher
• Awareness – Anthony De Mello
• Think Again – Adam Grant
• Originals – Adam Grant
• Bravey – Alexi Pappas
• Stillness is the Key – Ryan Holiday
• Ego is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday
• Atomic Habits – James Clear
• The Art of Impossible, A Peak Performance Primer – Steven Kotler
• Life As Sport, What Top Athletes Can Teach You About How to Win in Life – Jonathan Fader, PhD
• Turning Pro – Steven Pressfield
• The Practice – Seth Godin
• Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

Einstein 55/5

I dug into the 55 part of 55/5 hard.

I read a lot. Some books I had read and finished in late 2020, but most of these are from early 2021.

I worked out a Mastery Map, a tool from Life As Sport, to see if something else would come to light. (This is an awesome tool for pretty much everything.)

Adam Grant and his newest book, Think Again, kept popping up. Per my suggestion, Dad and I read it at the same time and had chats about it. As is natural when promoting a new book, Adam was on multiple podcasts, but even beyond that he was EVERYWHERE. Ok, Universe, I’m listening.

This caused me to pause, reframe, and flip everything I had been learning and reading completely upside down. I looked at books like Why Won’t You Apologize? and reread that title as if it were addressing me. Over the years, I had been so focused on my innocent intentions as validation for everything harmful I had ever done, versus what I perceived as my parents’ maliciously intended actions in response, that I couldn’t see things any other way.

What I mean by that is that nothing crappy I ever did carried intentions of harming my family, but it ultimately did harm them. The effects of our choices in life spread wider than the direct path the choices themselves travel in, but I had decided that it was their choice to receive my actions as they did, not mine. That they chose their feelings and responses. I wasn’t willing to own my part in causing them harm since that wasn’t my intention, and I had long since made amends with those who were directly impacted by my choices. “Choose to carry what you will, I’m all good with myself and my choices. However, your behavior in response to mine is intentionally harmful to me, so you are the offending party, not me. You owe me an apology.”

Wow. That was a lot to carry for 25 years. A mentally dysplastic perspective to match my physically dysplastic foundation.

Life Shift

Around this time, my older son (19) abruptly moved out. He’s an adult, go be free – but he left in a strange way, no goodbye, I didn’t even know he was leaving. His intentions were his own, completely unrelated to me, yet I felt it. His life choice hurt me.

OHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

OOOOHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

This gave me a new perspective that was exactly what I needed at this point. I was in a unique position of both creating (when I was young) and receiving (now as a mother) similar experiences and suddenly the effects on my family from my earlier life choices were clear.

It was time to let go of old ways of looking at everything and try something new. Literally, THINK AGAIN.

Think Again

It occurred to me that if I’m backing up to the beginning with my physical journey, the congenital nature of it, why not also back up to the source of our rift? If I’m healing everything on parallel paths, if everything is connected, why not also look from this perspective? It has had many branches and layers over the years, but it was time to go to the source. Me. I am the source. None of this would have ever happened were it not for my initial actions – regardless of my intentions. That is the ultimate heart of it, the source, the seed.

Damn. That is the most profound shift of my entire life.

Big Tab Two, I’m getting it!

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