A contemporaneous Apple Note I wrote ~ 1 hr after doing dumb shit on a mountain bike and surviving. Original title “Things occurring to me recently”
I got back on my bike and rode around the turn, following the stranger I had met the night before. He was my age, or at least closer to it than our grandparents and their friends who lived in this tiny town. During our water break I had been thinking about the garden we met in, and the elderly artist who had introduced us. She was nice. And then the ground disappeared, the path shrank to just a few inches wide. On either side there was a 60ft drop. This was no longer a trail, it was a narrow ridge-line between two peaks. If my mind had not been wandering back to the night at the garden, nothing in the world could have gotten me to willingly ride across this rocky tightrope. I was gripped with overwhelming fear. “Stupid. Why did you come here? You should have been paying attention! Now your sorry ass is going to die!”
I quietly assessed my situation and concluded that there was not even enough ground to put a foot down. I was committed, there was no way to turn around. And with that acceptance the fear was gone. Thoughts too. Nothing but me and the bike. And total bliss. I was all-in. I was all-there.
I’ve meditated, made music with my tribe, and found peace in all the usual ways. But I have never felt the level of bliss that washed over me that day. I get why people climb mountains and jump out of planes. I understand climbers who untie the rope. They are chasing the feeling — of being “all-there”, in flow — it’s all the same experience. People have been talking about it with different frames for thousands of years.
I looked at the startup’s bank account and revenue projections and realized that for the first time since founding the company we had less than a year of runway in the bank. I had been avoiding looking at the number for a few days. Back on the bike I had stopped at the top of a big downhill, afraid to go as fast as this hill requires of its survivors. But the moment I logged into Chase, the moment I peddled forward, the fear and discomfort, the thoughts of “how did I get here?”, that all went away.
Call it “running out of money clarity”. Doubts evaporated. Negative self talk quieted. The right things to do become obvious: hard decisions got made, difficult conversations had. I stopped feeling the hours, and stopped freezing in the face of challenges. Things got easier. They called me “strong”, but it had nothing to do with strength. They called me “smart”, but my brain was doing less than it had in ages — I was finally calm.
I used to think that only good things could feel good, and that only bad things could feel bad.
But I can tell you there are ways to experience something profoundly good that make it god awful. And there are ways to experience hardship that bring absolute bliss.
The things we spend our time on don’t feel good because they are “right for us”, or “rewarding” or “the best use of our time”. When they feel good it is because we were all-there when it is happening. Sometimes nothing even has to be happening — meditation teaches you to be all-there when nothing is happening.
When we felt like shit, it is because something was hard and we didn’t let ourselves be all-there, not because the situation was shitty. We tried to put our foot down, we got off the bike and walked home, or we sat frozen on the sidelines for months or years. We stopped moving forward. We got stuck in the mud.
People jump out of planes because the best feeling on earth is the feeling of being all-there. The cheapest, most reliable way to get the hit is by going all-in. The art of it, the trick you need to figure out, is how to be all-there without going all-in.
A relationship can ruin you but it won’t kill you. The wrong job can burn you out, but you’ll get out alive. A heartbreaking setback won’t stop your heart. You can lose it all and still find a meal.
Your brain will force you to be all-there when it counts…for physical survival. But getting yourself all-there for anything short of death is a more difficult task. It is something you have to learn.
It starts by starting. You don’t need to wait to have the perfect idea or plan. You just have to start moving in the right direction. 90% of your success comes from the creativity, opportunities, and luck that presents itself once you’re all-there. Truth will find you — if this isn’t the right road you’ll turn. Have faith in that. It is true. Besides — you’re not smart enough to predict which road is best, you can only know for sure once you arrive on the scene. Maps are inaccurate, roads are closed, lakes flood them, and chickens ironically cross them while going about their serious business.
Your perfect plan, your true vocation, that noble cause — whatever you are waiting for — it won’t protect you. It may even hurt you. It may keep you from being there enough to realize the best way to reach your goal, or the futility of the whole endeavor, or the much bigger opportunity down the road. It may distract you from following up with that other traveler who may be the best person you’ve ever worked with.
Chase “there-ness”. Learn to be all-there without being all-in. It feels better than anything else and it is the key to unlocking the good things in life.
tactics
Mindset tips
- Be skeptical of explaining unhappiness by pointing at what you’re doing, or who you’re doing it with. The test: Try to get “all-there” for a week, if you still feel bad, it’s the situation. If you feel better, practice how to be more there.
- Take some physical risk to simulate the mental risk. Summit a 14’er, mountain bike with a friend, climb outdoors and look down. Feel how good bad things can feel. Practice pushing forward, watch how commitment erases doubt.
Doing it
- Write it down and then just do it. Make one item to-do lists to start. Finish it. Get good at doing things just because they’re on the paper. Then have a separate process for writing the right thing on the paper. Don’t mix “is this the right work?” with the doing phase.
- Make it fun. Laugh. Crack jokes, always at your expense.