Life can change in an instant.

For some, that instant can be a phone call, a car crash, a medical diagnosis, or a “+” sign on a pregnancy test.

Those moments feel instantaneous.

Change, though, is a trickle of seemingly insignificant moments, each one a tiny spark, leading to a chain reaction of transformation.

You are about to read one of those stories.

On the morning of February 24, 2023 I woke up in another man’s arms — and it changed my life forever.

This is the story of how the most intense psychedelic experience of my life shattered my world, and called me to something better.

Our story does not start on that morning in February, however.

The best place for us to begin is on another day that my life completely changed, August 23, 2021: the day my son was born.

I Am Heaven Sent

Mothers get nine months of connecting with the growing human inside of them.

Fathers, on the other hand, do not feel the gravity of fatherhood until the moment they see or hold their child for the first time.

I was no different.

For months, fatherhood was a vague concept, a mountain peak rising slowly on the horizon.

Truth be told, I pushed back those feelings even as I caught my son exiting his mother, and while holding his tiny hands after he was born.

We did not get the pure golden rays of divine sunshine we thought his birth would give us.

Due to a small air bubble in his lungs at birth, he needed a couple of days in the NICU.

A NICU, mind you, that was at another hospital across town.

That hospital came and took our son to their NICU. So my wife and I spent our first night in the delivery room as parents without our child.

And it was during that night that the proverbial ton-of-bricks hit me.

While I tried to sleep, I felt an overwhelming feeling that I was already failing my son.

Fear, and his Lucifer-like tongue, whispered all my abject failures into my ears.

The loudest of them was that my business wasn’t successful enough.

“Robbie, how can you provide a life for Revan? Your business isn’t successful enough.”

Twelve hours after my son was born, as my wife recovered in her hospital bed and he slept alone at a hospital across town, I made a huge decision.

I am a hostage to my own humanity

I decided it was time to take the leap and hire a business coach to propel Side Quest Fitness to new heights.

Mere weeks after my son was born, I invested $10,000 into this business program.

Over the next four months, while my wife recouped and breastfed an infant, I secluded myself in our basement, grinding myself to the bone in pursuit of one monumental task: not failing as a father.

The good news: my investment paid off.

Over the first six months of my son’s life, Side Quest Fitness made an average of 13k per month.

But I couldn’t escape the nagging notion that I wasn’t good enough as a father.

Like so many new fathers, I capitulated to the narrative that I had to do more.

That I had to earn my son’s love and admiration; and that I, too, couldn’t let my wife down.

I told myself that it all fell on my back.

This pursuit of increased income, combined with sleep deprived nights are what, I’m now certain, led to my postpartum depression.

A depression I told no one about.

No one knew bout the suicidal thoughts that had crept back into my life. And I didn’t share my struggles with anyone because I didn’t think anyone would understand.

Except for one person. I knew she’d understand.

Death is death is death

The only thing was, I couldn’t talk to her about any of this. Because she was in the depths of losing her mind to dementia.

Five months into my son’s life, my mom, at 59, lost that battle at the end of January, 2022.

She had only met her grandson once.

Outside of taking a couple hours to write her this goodbye letter, I showed no grief around my mother’s death.

I shoved it all down inside — convincing myself that I’d already grieved the woman that dementia eroded away.

Humans: if we are but excellent at anything, it is lying.

As 2022 kicked off, I was sleep deprived, silently suffering with suicidal thoughts, trying to figure out the whole fatherhood thing, and the one person who accepted me and understood me my entire life was now dead.

But hey, my business was thriving!

So I did what I thought I had to do: I doubled down and buried myself deeper into my work.

I dealt with nothing. In fact, I didn’t tell my wife about my suicidal thoughts until April of 2022.

As if the first year of fatherhood wasn’t already trying enough, my wife got a new job on the other side of NY State, across the border in Vermont.

After my wife accepted the job, she asked one thing of me before we moved.

“Robbie, please find a therapist when we get there.”

Before I could keep that promise — and I did keep that promise — we had to do one of the top five most stressful things anyone experiences in life: move.

My ego’s like my stomach

So I pulled back my focus of growing the business, opting to not hire an assistant coach at that time to focus on our move.

Thankfully, business remained steady through the summer.

But no move is ever stress free.

An intelligent person would give themselves time to acclimate to their new surroundings.

I, however, was not one of those intelligent humans.

Why didn’t I give myself a few weeks to acclimate to a new space?

Because that gnawing voice of fear turned up to 11 once again.

You see, my wife’s new position came with a $12,000 pay cut (but brought us closer to her family).

So it was on me to pay for childcare.

With the move out of the way, I decided it was time to make an offer for coaching again.

Except this time, crickets. Nothing.

No one opted in.

Fear thundered through my mind like a Summer thunderstorm rolling over the hills:

“you’re failing; it’s not working; you’re going to fail your family.”

And in September of 2022, I made a pure emotional choice.

I signed up to work with another fitness business company, hoping they had the “secrets to success.”

This investment was 3x as much as the last one at 30k.

New Year, New Me…Or so it Seemed

2022 ended strong with an average of 13k in the Q4.

And when I tallied up all of 2022, Side Quest Fitness brought in a record total of $134,000.

I was surviving and we were okay. Most importantly, I felt I wasn’t failing my son.

With more confidence under my belt, I decided now was the time to expand and finally hire an assistant coach.

I wanted to attack 2023 like a Sith Lord igniting their lightsaber in a room full of Jedi.

Forget averaging 11k months over a year, I wanted consistent 30k months.

2023 was the year to go big or go home.

And this, dear reader, is where the roller coaster picks up speed.

On New Year’s Eve 2022, I hired my first assistant coach — two weeks later, I fired him.

After a long conversation we realized it wasn’t a good fit and would be best to part ways.

This wasn’t what I expected to happen two weeks into my “year of expansion.”

My business coach at the time told me to hire two coaches in case I had to fire one again.

So I did.

The stress of hiring, firing, and rehiring in less than a month compounded when at the end of January, I realized I had maxed out one of my business credit cards (the other was 40% maxed out).

And now in the first month of 2023 I felt pinched thin, worried I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills nor myself (or new coaches) because I didn’t know what the next month would bring.

So, yet again, I made an emotional choice rooted in fear and took out a loan from my online payment processor to get quick cash to pay off my credit card.

Phew. I got approved in minutes. I was saved. All was gonna be okay.

I’m Not Okay (I Promise)

Alright, a lot has happened as we (finally) get into 2023. Let’s recap shall we?

In January 2023, I:

• Lived in a place I hated
• Our son still wasn’t sleeping through the night
• Hired my first assistant coach, then fired him 16 days later
• Maxed out my business credit cards
• Let my emotions run the show

The days leading up to my friends’ wedding didn’t get any easier.

I’ll summarize the days leading up to Feb 24 because this matters to my mindset on that night.

• Hired two coaches (just in case)
• Paid off maxed out credit card, only to see another 6k tally up before the end of the month
• My wife’s stressed out, thanks to a colleague at work, and it spills over into every facet of our lives
• Our son gets an ear infection (could have been RSV?), but never acts sick until 3 days before I’m supposed to fly to Mexico
• My wife gets sick 2 days before I leave and we fight about me going to the wedding
• Half my recurring clients leave after 2-3 years, slashing my recurring income in half; then income for the biz is barely at 6k in February

Here Robbie, enjoy this stress sandwich with a side of stress and our stress dipping sauce. You’ll love it!

Days before the wedding, I’m stressed, anxious, scared, angry, exhausted, and fighting off seasonal depression.

This dear reader is pretty much all the backstory you need for now.

So let us get to the night in question and the experience that changed my life forever.

Into the Void We Go

I must first mention two things about psychedelics that anyone virgin or someone who will never partake must understand: set and setting.

I’ll let Wikipedia define these very two important aspects:

This is relevant for psychedelic experiences in either a therapeutic or recreational context.

The physical setting was gorgeous. The after party was at a mansion in the hills, overlooking the bay and rocky outcrops jutting their rocky fingers out of the sea.

My mental set, however, was a chaotic maelstrom waiting to release its energy.

• bottled up emotions around my mother’s death,
• moving somewhere I did not want to be,
• fighting with my wife days before,
• a new therapy experience (somatic therapy) that opened up new layers for me
• fear of failing at my business, as a husband, and as a father

Plus, I had started thinking more and more about whether life is all a simulation and what that means if it is.

Add all the above up, and you have a recipe for a “possible” funky experience.

Talking about psychedelic experiences is hard.

Historically, a stigma has surrounded psychedelics.

That stigma and their portrayal in movies has created preconceived notions about these drugs and their effects.

To the uninitiated, the story of someone’s experience with psychedelics can sound strange.

They may leave you wondering if that person’s lost their grip on reality or have gone coo-coo for coco puffs.

But these experiences are extremely personal.

And sometimes it’s hard to quantify a “trip,” because to understand them, you need to experience them.

Anywho, we partied from sunset to sunrise. And somewhere around 5 am my world got trippy.

The Experience

My mind began to wander into the lopsided upside-down, where I began thinking that we, humanity, are all beings known as Zorgs.

But I felt I was different.

I began to sense that we had all lived this experience before. And I was the only one who knew that “life” was all an illusion and that no one else knew the truth but me.

And I began to get anxious about this realization.

People would walk by and I’d think:

“I’ve seen this before; I’ve lived this moment in another life. Why can’t anyone else see this?”

I wanted to wake people up. I wanted them to know the truth…

….I lost myself in this place for who knows how long.

And then, my mind turned off.

I lost all connection to my Self.

Somehow, right before the sun rose, I ended up outside, staring off into the distance.

I don’t know how or why I wound up outside.

My friend, Dedra, saw me standing out there and came to check on me.

She knew I was experiencing something because she asked me if I was okay and I replied, “the asteroid is coming; we’re all gonna die.”

As an experienced psychonaut, she went inside and grabbed her husband, Ben, who’s had his own handful of mind-shattering psychedelic trips before.

Ben later described what I told him I experienced like this:

“it’s as if your brain is trying to access a file that it hasn’t accessed for years, but there’s an error. And it just gives you a spinning wheel.”

That is an apt description of what was occurring with me.

Ben walked up to me and asked if I was okay.

When my friends ask if am all right, I lie straight to their faces

As I told him about the asteroid, he put his arms around me, and held me like a father holding an emotional child, and asked me about what I was experiencing.

I have no idea how long Ben held me in his arms. My conscious mind had switched its power off.

At some point, though, my brain started to “log” back on. And I could hear Ben whispering, “you’re loved; we’re here for you; you’re loved.”

As my consciousness slowly rebooted, it felt like an ax cleaved my mind in two.

Here’s how I’ve come to understand and describe this moment.

When I saw my mom after her dementia diagnosis in June of 2021, there was a moment where our eyes met and I felt like I could see her mind split in two.

The front end couldn’t grasp what she was doing or why, but I could see through her mind and the back of her brain was screaming, “I’m here! I’m here! Let me out!”

I experienced that with her again when she saw my wife in October of 2021.

My mom recognized my wife in the back of her mind, but her front couldn’t grasp who my wife was.

That’s what this “out-of-mind” experience felt like to me.

I was there….

…But I wasn’t.

As Ben held me in his arms, I felt stuck. There was nothing the True me could do.

I could feel Ben’s hugs, I could see my friends gathering around to check on me (or off doing their own thing).

And yet, I continued to tremble in fear, waiting for this asteroid to streak across the sky and kill us all.

My friend John came over to check on me. My split mind knew it was John, but it also felt like he was someone else, someone I vaguely knew, someone I loved….

…and someone who was a key to it all ending.

John tried speaking to me and all I could say was: “don’t; don’t say it; don’t say what I know you’re going to say.”

You see, in the void my mind was in, in the vision of what was to come, I knew there were words John would speak, and after he said them, I knew (felt, really) I’d see the asteroid fly over and smash into the ocean.

And so I fought, with all the power I could muster, to speak up and tell John to say nothing.

Because I knew if he said nothing, we would live.

This experience — knowing that someone was going to say something and knowing the gist of what they’d say before the space rock fell — continued half a dozen times.

Each time it would be someone new who I didn’t want to speak.

And each time, I desperately attempted to prevent the cycle from playing out — words spoken, asteroid streaks over my left shoulder, impact, death.

You never know what you have until you get it yanked out of your chest

I could see the future. I could see the destruction and death.

But thanks to my quick action, I never let the person who spoke in the vision say what they were supposed to say before the asteroid appeared over my shoulder.

Still, each time we were saved, I was hit with a new fear that it was still coming.

The fear was there, ever present, cycling through my mind.

Ben finally sat me down on the ground.

And I watched people walk out the sliding glass door to gather with the rest of our group watching the sunrise.

It was in this moment that I had one final feeling that I knew what would happen next.

And it was the same experience: I knew someone was coming out the door, that they would say something, and this asteroid would streak across the sky…

…then destruction.

Then, my friend Collin walked by, and I blurted out, “he’s not supposed to be here.”

And faster than Thanos can snap his finger, I, Robbie — me — returned.

Like the fire cloud of destruction I saw in my vision, a cloud of anxiety engulfed me, fearing I had done something “wrong,” I asked Ben: “Ben, what did I do?”

He assured me nothing happened and continued to hug me and rock me back and forth as my consciousness came back online.

Everyone checked on me for the next few hours, offering assistance or just an ear to describe what I had experienced.

I tried to sleep.

But I slept perhaps no more than three hours that day. I spent the rest of the day sitting by myself, attempting to cobble together any understanding of my experience.

So this is what we’re up against

Once I returned home, I knew I needed to unpack this experience. I needed to understand what this vision meant.

Fortunately, I had met Adrian Ellison at the wedding. Adrian has a background in Jungian dream work.

Once I settled back into life at home, I reached out to Adrian and booked a session to unpack this vision.

I had Googled “dream meanings” already, hoping I’d find something that would explain what an asteroid meant.

The truth is, anything you find on Google is worth less than Monopoly money.

Adrian explained this to me: seeing a spider in your dream could mean a completely different thing to you than it does to me or anyone else.

She reiterated to me that her goal wasn’t to tell me what my vision meant.

Her goal was to help me discover what each aspect of this vision meant to me.

She said she’d have her interpretation, but that ultimately, only I would know the true meaning of the dream.

There were a handful of constants from my experience:

• The ocean
• The rocky mountain in the bay
• Someone saying “something”
• The asteroid
• Destruction and death

One of Adrian’s first questions on our call was about what associations the ocean had for me.

I told her that my family had always vacationed at the beach as a kid, but I was more of a mountain person.

More importantly, I told her that I felt like this “dream” I was stuck in in Mexico was one I had had as a kid.

I had experienced it before…

…I just couldn’t tell you when; but I knew it in my soul.

Adrian smiled, and asked if I wanted her interpretation of this dream.

Become more than just a burden

She told me that this dream I was stuck in was a loop I had become familiar with over the years, a pattern I had used to keep the peace amongst my family.

She said that I was on the verge of having a conversation with my true Self that would be an asteroid in my life.

And that nothing that had held this pattern together in my life would survive the transformation that I’m being called to.

This whole experience, in her opinion, was nothing more than a calling to meet this true part of myself that I’ve denied for so long.

“These familiar patterns are going to have to die. And what brought you out of this is super beautiful, it’s Colin.

He represents the most genuine, real, nonfakeness that you can have.

Your ego has convinced you that what you need to fear is the asteroid. And in reality, the asteroid that is coming is here to renew the soil of who you truly are.

It’s here to teach you higher codes of what peace really is without sacrificing a part of yourself.

And for you to recognize that the person who is important to you has always been there and will always be there. And there is no asteroid that can change that in your reality.”

As Adrian said these words, my soul wept.

With every word she spoke, wherever the soul or Self resides, I felt that part of me come alive. My true, most authentic Self knew what she was saying was the Truth.

This was a calling.

I knew deep in my soul I was being called to something greater than my current self.

And this is where the work began.

So is that what you call a getaway?

But this isn’t easy work.

Like a vase that’s fallen and shattered into hundreds of pieces on the floor, integrating a psychedelic experience and its lessons can leave you feeling broken.

Rebirth is magical when it’s done. But like birth, it’s not magical during it.

I was still unclear on who this new “me” was supposed to be. Who exactly am I being called to step into?

So while I sat with this experience, and worked through aspects of it with my therapist and in journaling and meditation, I still had a business to grow.

I knew I’d figure all this out, eventually.

This all was only wishful thinking

January and February of 2023 had been ridiculously stressful months in business and life in general.

But I had high hopes that the next few months, with all I was doing to expand the biz, would really pay off.

In March, I launched a 28-day challenge and brought in 11 new clients for the team. That led to my best month of income for the business at 23.5k.

That sounds great. And it is.

But every week during March I had a breakdown. Fear continued whispering its Wormtongue-like words into my ear.

“It’s all going to go away; you’ll have to fire your coaches; you’re failing. Your spending so much, how will you ever pay it off!?”

I heard this every day.

While I:

• meditated,
• checked in with clients,
• tried to be present with my wife & son.

At least once a week it caused debilitating insomnia that prevented me from sleeping 36 hours or more.

And every time I watched money come flowing in, I watched elevated levels of it go out.

20% of all monthly income went to repay the quick $16k loan I took out in January.

Tac on the continued investment in the coaching business (2k), my friend’s ad company (2k) and the cost of running ads (1k), and even though I had a comfortable 25k sitting in my business checking account, I feared if I paid off all my debts I wouldn’t have enough money to survive for a few months.

Fear attempted to convince me that:

• all the success I wanted could be gone in a snap
• I’d have to fire my coaches
• failing my family was a guarantee

Fear convinced me to worry about months that hadn’t happened yet.

“Sure, Robbie you averted a could-be crisis and have enough money to get through the next month or two (if no new clients signed on in April).

But what about June and July? Those are always slow(er) months.”

A loaded God complex

After one of my breakdowns in March, my wife, who’s much more spiritually minded than I, suggested I read “The Divine Law of Compensation.”

I was apprehensive at first. I have a lot of trauma around growing up in the Bible Belt and some aspects of spirituality smell like religion and it turns me off.

But I figured what the hell.

Throughout the book, Marianne Williamson says that the Universe (or God or whatever you want to call it) isn’t out to watch you fail.

To the contrary, the Universe wants you to succeed.

And that the first step in getting what you want is to ask for it.

So as I sat in meditation one morning, I asked the Universe for what I wanted.

I asked for The Universe to deliver on what I desired, I wanted another 20k month.

20k would save me. I could pay off all my debt without touching anything already in my account.

April started off with a bang. I had 5 new clients in 10 days. And over the month, I closed 11 out of 14 calls that I took in the month.

By the end of April, Side Quest Fitness had had the best month in its history: $31,000.

The Universe delivered! I was safe.

Despair can ravage you

But four days into May, I had the biggest meltdown of the year.

Instead of watching Star Wars on May the Fourth, I was in the fetal position in my living room weeping, again.

And when I say weeping, I mean keening.

Why was this happening?

I had had back-to-back stellar months and “saved” my business from perceived failure….

…but I was in the middle of our living room floor dying on the inside.

Why did it feel like my soul was still being tortured?

In my moment of utter despair, I heard a voice speak from somewhere deep in my heart:

“Robbie, go take a walk. Get outside.”

The moment right before a pin crosses the threshold of a balloon and bursts the balloon is when the balloon is under the greatest amount of pressure.

Breakthroughs, mental or spiritual or however you see them, are no different.

This whole psychedelic experience and why it had happened to me was about to be revealed.

I can’t keep breathing this pain in my lungs

As I started my walk, a question arose in my mind: why does all this keep coming back to my mom?

In all the things I’d thought about since Cabo, in the dreams I had written down to understand their meaning, in each of the 9 meltdowns that I’d had since Mexico there had been one thing that seemed constant: my mom.

This is where the pin finally burst the balloon.

Everything I was feeling, everything I feared could happen, wasn’t about the business.

No one would have called me a failure had it all gone wrong. No one would let us starve if my business had failed.

All the worry, the depression, the fear I felt wasn’t fear at all.

It was grief. Grief had disguised itself as fear.

I had never let myself grieve the loss of my mother. I had never allowed myself to feel the immense loss and gaping hole left in my life without her.

Instead of grieving my mom, I plugged that hole with work and the responsibilities of being a father.

I had convinced myself of a massive lie: that I had grieved my mom and her life and who she was to me long before she died.

As all of this hit me, as my inner voice revealed the Truth to me, I felt the weight of it all evaporate off my shoulders.

My soul felt a burden leave; my ego died a necessary death.

Then the big realization hit me: my experience in Cabo wasn’t an asteroid for my business — it was a message from my mom.

She was calling me to something bigger and better — a more whole me.

It’s Hard to Be the Better Man, When You Forget You’re Trying

The dream loop I was stuck in, the incoming asteroid as Adrian has said, was an invitation from my mother to heal my trauma: a call to step into a more authentic and true version of myself.

I sat with this realization the rest of the day.

And the next morning, as I meditated, I let myself feel everything that I had pushed down for the last year.

I apologized to my mom for not coming to see her in those final days.

“Mom,” I confessed, “I couldn’t do it.”

I couldn’t see her in that state; I was too scared to see her like that.

It had scared me to see her in October of 2022. I could see in her eyes how lost she felt.

And it broke my fucking heart.

She knew who I was. She knew my son was her grandson…

….but it didn’t add up.

You could see the wheels spinning — “oh that’s a baby, a cute baby, he’s your son? My grandson? Oh. That’s neat.”

When my dad called to say mom only had a few more days to live, I could have booked a flight and gone home.

My wife wouldn’t have blamed me for leaving.

But I continued to hide behind the fact that I had work to do and that I was a father now and I couldn’t leave my wife alone.

The truth is, I was terrified.

I didn’t want to see my mom that way. I couldn’t handle those emotions because I didn’t know how to handle them. So better to push them down, drown them in the depths.

If there is light, I hope it finds you

Reconciliation brings healing.

And as I apologized to my mom that morning, I heard her voice, as clear as if she were on the couch beside me:

“Robbie, it’s okay. I understand. I love you so much. I am so proud of you. You can forgive yourself now.”

The floodgates opened.

A rush of emotion swept over me, and I let it take me under.

I finally (fully) let myself feel the grief of losing the one person who never judged me or wanted me to be anything or anyone other than my true self.

Peace. Beautiful, embracing, love-filled peace engulfed me.

Was this forgiveness?

Is this what forgiveness feels like?

If it was….

…..I felt free.

This was the asteroid. This was the moment of destruction that needed to happen so that something new could grow in its place.

Sitting in the grief of losing my mom and forgiving myself for not going to see her was the foundation of building the new me.

Whatever success I wanted, whatever growth was on the horizon for me, could not take place first without letting myself grieve my mom.

The thing about deep inner change is that once you peel back one layer, more layers get revealed.

And as the year continued, in each layer I peeled back, I discovered more and more questions.

One of the biggest came later that May.

Today I finally learned to say I love myself

While listening to the new NF album, his lyrics slapped me with this question: “who am I trying to impress?”

In this impressing, am I really just after acceptance?

Who do I feel the need to be accepted by with my success?

My wife? My son? My friends?

Will more success make me more acceptable to those I admire or love?

Would I feel more validated that I had earned a level of success in comparison to theirs?

As I discovered more of these questions and worked through them in therapy, while microdosing and meditating, walking around the park, and in conversations with close friends I began to chip away at more of the reasons behind where my decision making came from.

In June, the next big realization hit me like a Mike Tyson punch to the face — the “why” behind every decision I had made since my son was born.

And that realization was this: since my son’s birth, every decision I had made had been born out of my insecurities.

The fear of not being enough, of not living up to other’s standards, the fear of failing, the fear of not providing, the fear of disappointment, the fear…

the fear…

…..the fear.

Fear controlled my decision making.

It:

• led me to making emotional decisions in business
• snuffed out my courage to say I didn’t want to live in Vermont
• prevented me from seeing my mom in her final hours
• drove my desire to succeed at whatever cost

Fear controlled my life in every facet.

And you cannot lead a business, a family, or life from a position of fear.

Hope Dangles on a String

Armed with what felt like the treasure I had taken from the dragon, I carried on with life.

But like every good Nintendo boss, Boss Battles come in 3s. And I had one more battle to fight with fear.

And in August I had my final breakdown.

Fear once again reared its ugly head after an opportunity I felt very confident about coming through, did not.

The following morning, as I meditated, I broke down and admitted something to the Universe that had been under the surface all year.

I admitted that I was burned out. From everything.

The weight of scrambling to grow the business, denying the grief of losing my mom, the battles with fear and my insecurities had left my soul exhausted.

Once I made this final admission, it felt like the last chain on my soul finally broke.

And over the next few days, I decided that the only way forward was to do the opposite of what I thought I had to do.

I spent less time doing things to grow my business. And spent more time doing the things that brought me joy.

I read more.

Played more video games.

And I picked the guitar back up and started playing music again.

My focus for the rest of the year was on refilling my cup. I decided to stop letting fear control my decisions.

From September to December, I focused more on doing the things that filled my cup and less on the things that drained me.

My business didn’t implode.

In fact, I still brought in 10k a month from September to December. This was enough to pay myself, my team, and cover expenses, but with no profit.

During that time, I went through my finances and canceled subscriptions or services that I didn’t need or use anymore .

I then consolidated my credit card debt with a small business loan from my bank and the Small Business Administration.

More importantly, I began to shift my mindset. And doing so provided the foundation for me to start stepping into and becoming my higher self.

All my expectations and insecurities were strangling me. And you can’t grow when you’re strangled.

Have another drink and drive yourself home

Driven by fear, I had burned myself out since my son’s birth trying to not fail him.

Sure, success had come. Side Quest Fitness had done $110,000 in the first six months of 2023 (that’s 78% of what I had made in total in 2022).

But at what cost?

My sanity and soul?

All of this led me to a fact all successful business owners eventually face:

A business can only expand to the level that its owner has expanded.

I spent the final two quarters of 2023 working on everything I had discovered about myself. I paused growing the business so I could grow the most important factor in the business: me.

Phew. This has been a lot. And I’m not really sure how to wrap this up. Because I’m still living this.

I’m still expanding myself and growing into who I’ve been called to be.

So I guess the only way to wrap this up is to pull a Return of the King and include about seven different endings.

I am broken and no good for you

Weeks before my trip to Mexico, I told my therapist: “I’m so tired of being broken.”

Seconds later she responded with this:

“I’m going to challenge you on that. You’re not broken. You just need to listen.”

And in part that’s what I needed to do all 2023: listen.

My actions weren’t aligned with who I want to be. Fear sat in the driver seat. And you cannot let fear drive your life.

A great life, and especially a business, are driven by values.

To move forward and step into a higher Self, I needed to rediscover, redefine, and recommit to my values.

And that process came from the most unlikely source: a parenting book, Very Intentional Parenting.

In the book, Destiny Ann Davis encourages readers to write out a list of what they value. And then whittle that down to the three most important.

This exercise helped me uncover/rediscover my values.

My three biggest guiding values are:

1. Freedom
2. Integrity
3. Creativity

Reconnecting to these values helped me get close to the deep, inner aspects of my highest Self.

Should tell my friends when I love them

In May 2023, when I asked myself who I was trying to impress, I opened the door to listening more to my inner voice.

And I began to notice all the ways in which my “success” was entwined with a deep drive from my inner child for acceptance.

My inner child was so afraid that his friends who are more successful wouldn’t accept him if he never reached the same level of success.

What I realized is that the people I’ve surrounded myself with don’t care about my success — and especially not my failures.

None of them will toss me aside if I go broke.

They are my friends because of who I am. Not what level of success I achieve.

At the end of the day, they will love me in success, or failure.

Don’t you worry what their bitter hearts are going to say

There’s a lot of talk online in the mental health, spiritual, or psychology spaces about inner child work.

Some stake their careers on it. Others scoff at it.

For me, getting more in touch with the younger parts of myself, and the experiences that brought trauma to his little heart, helped me heal.

One of those moments happened around the age of seven or eight (oddly last year was my 8th year in biz).

My sister and I came home with our report cards and gave them to our parents. My sister had a reading comprehension learning disability.

On this one occasion, she made a “C” in reading or English or whatever they call it in 2nd grade.

I, however, made a “B” in a class and was questioned on why it wasn’t an “A.”

As I recalled that moment to my therapist, she asked me, “if you could be there with that younger version of you right now, what would you do?”

I told her I’d hug him. And let him know that this grade means nothing.

That I would do things this kid could never imagine. And, more importantly, that he is okay and lovable no matter his grades.

Call me a safe bet

I needed to learn to sit in the unknown. I could not survive if I worried about what “could” happen every day.

The stress storms I created in my mind weren’t real or even guaranteed.

Here’s a truth I’ve learned:

We don’t get what we want, we get what we expect. What we think will happen is what we create.

If you live with the expectations that you’re a loser, you’ll find every way to justify that belief and make it true.

If you believe you’re a failure, you will find failure in every corner you look.

Patterns are hard to break, though. And this pattern returned again in 2024 for me.

April of 2024 was the worst income month in three years for Side Quest Fitness. And as April ended, I found myself in a stress spiral once again.

Expenses had outpaced income that month.

And I began creating stories that the business was going to fail again.

Fear smelled blood in the water. And it attacked like a ravenous Great White.

This time though I was different. I had been here before.

And, this year I hired an amazing life coach, Nick Tillia, who helped me see all this for what it was: a cycle trying to repeat again.

Things can change in a single day. In a week your whole month could swing you back the other way.

And that happened in a week for the business. Within a week, we tripled our income from the previous month.

May of 2024 ended as the third best month in history.

Learning to live in peace with the unknown isn’t something that changes over night.

It takes time to develop that skill.

And someday, I’ll think about the possibilities on the horizon at the first of a month and not fear the possibility of impending doom.

Think a lot and live without it

One thing my life coach said to me early on is that “clarity comes with consequences.”

Before you can solve a problem, you must first become aware it’s there.

The consequence of that clarity brings you face to face with something so many of us run from: responsibility.

This experience woke me the fuck up.

And since that night in February, I’ve gained more clarity around things I want out of life, and how I want to show up in nearly every aspect of said life.

It is now my responsibility to make it clear what I want. I can’t hide how I feel any longer.

I have to speak up for myself. Because no one else will. That’s my responsibility.

One of the ways I’m attempting to do that is by disconnecting shame from my identity.

Even around the things I want, or the parts of me that I’m (re)discovering, there lives a fear that I’ll lose people around me by simply stepping into my true Self.

And that is how shame gets its power.

If I let shame keep me there, I’ll never become who I’ve been called to be.

Shame doesn’t allow growth. Only love and acceptance can do that.

The tour is over, I survived

Music has an end point. And as I sit here and think of a way to wrap this up, I’m stuck.

I don’t know how to resolve the chords I’ve just played.

All I know is that at the time of writing this I’ve realized the work of writing this wasn’t for anyone but myself.

Writing, reading, and editing this 7,000 plus word article helped me see just how far I’ve come since that February night.

There are days where this same fear comes back to me. I spend hours fighting off falling into another fear spiral.

But I’m healing. That much I know.

And though I am nowhere near to what I’ve been called to become, I am better.

It took Luke Skywalker more than three years to become a Jedi. So why should I expect to be the next version of me in less than a year?

Change is a trickle of seemingly insignificant moments that eventually leads to transformation.

I’ll never forget our love

This is the most poignant and beautiful line in all the MCU.

And I hear Vision say this every time I watch my son with my mother-in-law.

Watching my mother-in-law with my son, I mourn the fact that I will never get the chance to watch my mom laugh, dance, snuggle, or put my son to bed.

I never heard my mother say this, my father relayed it to me the day after.

But that October in 2021 when we went to NC to see my family, as my parents left our AirBnB, my mom turned to my dad and said, “Robbie’s done a great job with Revan.”

My mother never said my son’s name again, forgotten in the creeping fog of dementia.

But she said it. And though I did not hear it, at least I know that for a moment, she knew.

And was proud of me.

Now when this grief comes, I sit in that grief. I let it take me on whatever ride it needs to take me on. Fighting it, shoving it down into the dark reaches of my soul, never leads to relief.

Grief will never leave. It will always be here.

Because love never dies. It’s everlasting.