TWH#39: Reboot

On coming back (again)

Photo by Fiona Smallwood on Unsplash

My favorite movie of all time is The Shawshank Redemption. Right as the film is reaching its surprising climax, the inimitable Morgan Freeman narrates the following:

“Not long after the warden deprived us of his company, I got a postcard in the mail. It was blank, but the postmark said Fort Hancock, Texas. Fort Hancock... right on the border. That's where Andy crossed. When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down, it always makes me laugh. Andy Dufresne... who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne... headed for the Pacific.”

This quote recently came back to my mind as it helps explain why I put this newsletter on hiatus once again for the last few months.

On May 27 this year I got married to the love of my life. What was in hindsight an incredibly meaningful moment kicked off what turned out to be (by far) the worst three or so months of my life. For a number of reasons that only became clear later, I went through what I now affectionately call “the dark night of the soul”.

I developed an anxiety disorder that was so debilitating I couldn’t function anymore. I could barely leave the house without my body and my mind screaming. I certainly couldn’t work anymore, never mind writing here or elsewhere. At one point I had to be real with a client, tell him what was going on with me, and politely ask to end the coaching session right there and then. I didn’t get back to coaching for a whole month.

That was the point where I knew I needed help. I wasn’t getting out of this on my own. I could feel it in my guts. My wife was super supportive, despite this being extremely difficult on her, too. Part of my issues (read: limiting beliefs) was an aversion to medication, but desperation can do wonders to get wise. I finally relented and went to see a psychiatrist. I also found a therapist online. In one of the earlier weekly therapy sessions, I was anxious out of my skull and the therapist had to hold me through the session almost minute by minute. Every cell in my body wanted to bolt.

Thanks to the combination of medication and therapy I slowly started to recover. By mid-August I was able to cross the “dysfunction threshold” and get back to my coaching work. The journey, though, has not been without its ups and downs. But overall, it keeps trending in the right direction.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, in a world where everyone is trying to show they have it all together, it’s good to be reminded every now and then that you’re not alone when you are struggling. When I resumed my coaching practice, being vulnerable with my clients and sharing what I was going through allowed some of them to open up to similar issues. No “poor me”, just real talk. We grew closer because of that, and it felt good.¹

Once I was back to being functional and able to internalize external wisdom again, I picked up a wonderful book called At Last a Life: Anxiety and Panic Free, by Paul David. I had started reading it at the peak of my anxiety when minutes turned into hours, hours into days, and days into (very long) weeks. At that point, though, I was so sensitized that nothing could pierce the thick veil of anxiety that was constantly enveloping me. Now, with that mental and physical noise dimmed, I could. In its pages I found an almost exact reproduction of what I had been going through.

I’m sharing what I learned from this book because it has not only become almost a mantra that I come back to, but also because it applies to every walk of life—and work.

• I am not my thoughts. My mind generates tons of thoughts that are, at best, part of what I am, but are not entirely who I am. My self and my thoughts are separate, as I can observe them.

• My thoughts construct my reality. As I observe what thoughts I’m thinking, I’m able to see how powerfully my thoughts actually shape my reality. Two different people living the same objective reality have two different subjective experiences, which reflects in their thinking.

• My thoughts are habits of the mind. Most of my thinking is automatic, habitual, something that I’m simply used to. Some of my thoughts are so familiar that I don’t even question them. Like behavioral habits that we act out in the world, thoughts are “habits of the mind.”

• Some thoughts are bad habits of the mind. Many thoughts are adaptive and have served me extremely well. Others, not so much. Those maladaptive habits are the “bad habits of my mind” because they lead me to outcomes I don’t want.

• Habits can be replaced, new ones created. Just like new behavioral habits can be created through repetition and practice, the same is true for mind habits. I realized that acting anyway (even if my mind is somehow telling me otherwise out of fear) recruits the body to tell the mind, over time, to think differently.

Which brings me back to Andy Dufresne and The Shawshank Redemption. I really feel like I crawled through a river of shit and came out cleaner on the other side. I have never felt better mentally as I do now. It’s like that metaphor where you’re carrying a backpack full of rocks and don’t even realize it. This process allowed me to not only observe the backpack I was carrying, but also to put down a lot of its contents. And I thought I was quite self-aware… yeah, right.

In any event, for those of you who were already following my writing, now you know. And for the many that subscribed to the Hagakure over the last few months of silence, now you also know. How about that for a first impression, aye? 😂

As for me, I really have no clue what the future holds. But I like reminding myself of Chogyam Trungpa’s quote:

The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.

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I have not forgotten the purpose of this newsletter. What started as a weekly curated list of links about tech leadership evolved into my own original content about the same stuff. That will continue to be the case, only hopefully less preachy and more personal about my own experiences both as a former engineering leader and now as a coach to many wonderful product & engineering leaders. Ultimately, my promise from the last comeback post very much holds:

Write to think, write to help, and write to explore.

Wishing you a great 2023!

1. If you are going through something similar and would like to talk to someone, please reach out to me by simply replying to this email or directly messaging me on Twitter. I am more than happy to text or set up a call.