Having a Plan
The day I woke up on the couch with a bottle of Jack Daniels, a pint of moonshine and a spilled pill bottle on my coffee table next to a half smoked joint in April 2017 I didn’t have the plan of getting sober. In fact, I didn’t have a plan to do much of anything besides finish the joint, drink the Jack Daniels and try to hold off on the moonshine until noon.
Sometime before noon I received a phone call from my Cousin. He was headed out to Montana to pay a visit. He wasn’t leaving next week, he was already boarding the plane and was going to arrive in a couple of hours. My plan changed for the day and little did I know this visit would change the course of my entire life.
I talk more about this visit in this blog post, but for the sake of this post I want to concentrate on roll of having a plan in life. On his last visiting I didn’t have a plan to stay sober. Once he left I would resume my miserable circle of punishment. Drink from the time I woke up. Supplement my drinking with pills and pot. Squeek the side door open just enough to let the dog squeeze her lanky body out into the lawn. Let her back in once she got to barking. Slowly increase the volume on the speakers throughout the day until the evening came and it was maxxed out and I finally achieved my goal: black out, oblivion. The rest would be a mystery.
This way of living is not living with a plan. A plan is something that helps a road trip end up somewhere besides the place where it started. A plan it something that helps a business increase revenue and grow in influence. A plan helps an athlete rise to the next level. A plan is a design to better oneself, to achieve new highs (not the same ones again and again). It helps to gain and add value and purpose to life by giving direction to actions otherwise arbitrary.
The necessity of using plans for me was a foreign concept. I knew what plans were, but I didn’t apply them to my life. In fact, I felt like plans were confining. Small prisons people put themselves in ultimately limiting experience, variety, spontaneity in life. I disdained plans.
So here I am a few weeks after my cousin left. I didn't plan on going to AA with him, but I did. I didn't plan on going to the early morning meeting in the musty church basement for the next couple of meetings, but I did. I started attending AA with no actual plan in life. Things got better to the extent I was not suffering immeasurable pain from hangovers that could make the gallows at wounded knee seem accommodating. I also got a job, started going outside, began eating again- things like that. These are all good things, but I still didn't have a plan.
Have you ever started out on a car ride with no direction? I have a couple of times and they are fun, until they aren’t. This usually happens about 45 minutes to an hour in for me. I start thinking about food, the couch, a hike, my bike, basically anything else than the drive. So lets fast forward a few months: Married, still no plan; Going to daily AA meetings and staying sober, still no plan; Working at a dead end ski shop and driving Uber, still no plan. I had no direction and shit got old real fast.
If I was on a road trip with a goal then things would have been okay, I would reach my destination soon. But, my legs started to get restless, my eyes lost focus on the meandering road going nowhere, I began dreaming about all the other things. RELAPSE! BAM! CRASH BOOM, FUCK.
Luckily, I have had the pleasure of being with a woman who has a wench on the front of her super duty Ford. She helped to pull me out of the ditch I slammed into and assisted me in putting my truck back together again. But, this happened again, and again. These three relapses are considered the “Trials” in the upcoming book, “Trials to Triathlon.” A large reason they occurred in succession is because I didn’t have a plan.
Ok, so lets fast forward again past the trials and into my life today. First off, let me say that today I feel more free, more peaceful, more happy, and more fulfilled than I have ever felt in my life. Why? Well, because I picked up triathlon and learned a very valuable lesson that I want to share with you.
Before having a plan in sobriety I stumbled, hurt, ached and felt hopeless and lost. Triathlon was no different. I was working out hard. Running, biking, swimming stretching and making little to no progress. A mile or two run was all I could pump out; how was I going to do an Ironman?!? Not only was I making no progress, I kept becoming injured!
A couple of weeks after I started training, I asked a man in my AA group, Jim if he could help me with a plan in sobriety and in triathlon because both were hurting so badly. He sat down with me and for weeks I learned how to use the AA Big Book as recovery treatment plan. He also wrote me out a brief little training plan. But, at this point I only got a small taste of what it was like to live with a plan. I still had a lot to learn. But the taste was savory, sweet, reassuring and gave me hope. I finally noticed that my sobriety was a possibility. I was no longer scared, saying to myself, “how am I never going to drink again!” After a few weeks of following the AA plan my joy ride turned into a road trip. My car had a direction and life began to feel good. I rolled down my windows, felt the cool air and travelled onwards.
Not having a solid plan is like no plan at all. Jim had set me up with a solid AA plan, but a tenuous athletic training plan. It took my first season bumping around like a pinball before I decided to reach out to my new friend, Steven Moody after reading a Blog Post of his, 5 habits of successful athletes. In it he says that people who make it through the rigorous training for Iron Man are the ones who plan out their training in advance. I decided to look into his training plans and see if they might help me. When I took a glance at first I felt fear. Much like the AA literature, it wasn’t just about being sober- there were descriptive steps with exact direction, some I wanted to change and didn’t like so much. For instance, the swims that he has include things like one-arm freestyle, swimming with legs only, and god forbid, BACKSTROKE?! But, I had learned a valuable lesson in AA that helped me advance in triathlon, just give in to the entire plan!
So I did. What have the gifts been? Freedom! I can only describe it as this. Imagine being on the beautiful island of Jurassic park. There are hundreds of dinosaurs out to eat you, but all you want to do is enjoy the luxurious beach and fresh fruits dangling near jungle waterfalls. Well, the only way to enjoy this island is to somehow get free of all the man eating dinosaurs. Therefore, to do this you must build a huge wall around the beach you want and have it extend up to your favorite waterfall that has mango trees draping over it. Once the wall is complete you can swim, bike and run all you want without fear of being swallowed by a gigantic lizard. Good analogy?? maybe not… Let me try another real life one in closing.
Marriage and Finance. What big topics with centuries of failures and horror stories attached to them. These things, however, are no different from the joy ride, the training, and the sobriety. Gotta have a plan! Jess and I began stumbling over finance, like big time. We were almost to the point of getting credit cards. Luckily, both of our credit had numbers too low to be accepted by any of the card companies. So we had to find another plan for our money. We decided to find a plan that gave our money direction. We had heard of Dave Ramsey and how he teaches you to use your money while not letting your money use you. When this happens you can have peace in your finance. This was a foreign, novel idea for us. We ordered up his book The Total Money Makeover and downloaded his curriculum: Financial Peace University. After completing this what happened? Well the dinosaurs of consumerism stopped sinking their teeth into our flesh and we began bathing in peace under the waterfalls of our dreams. We now have less money than we ever had. We just had a newborn in the NICU and we have more bills than ever, but Ironically, we have more peace!! Strange huh? This program, Financial Peace University also served as our first marriage counseling. It’s not designed to do that as it is great for singles too. But if your married, try it. I can guarantee that your worries and fights diminish to almost nil!
The same thing happened when I developed a plan around nutrition. Food choices became easier and nutrition was not such a feared subject. It can be easy with a plan like that given by Juice-Plus. The fact is there is a plan for almost anything. The trick is finding one and sticking to it. The ones I have found, work. Not only for me, but countless others. If you don’t believe me, just do a little more research and you will see people have found health in Juice-Plus, Peace in Financial Peace, recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, and Iron man capacity in Mr. Moody’s trainings!
Well, I think that is all for my Sunday morning reflection. If you want a plan for recovery, finance, Nutrition, triathlon contact me and I can help. Or click on any of the below links: