Container
A Place to Trade Strategy for Self
Welcome to Gentle Discipline, your weekly integration huddle on mental health, physical fitness, entrepreneurship, and community. What to expect in this issue:
Thought Piece: Container: A Place to Trade Strategy for Self
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
— Rumi
It’s easy to connect the dots backward in our lives, to see how we arrived where we are. The mostly undetectable momentum of our past is usually punctuated by significant events, turning points, or moments where the direction we’re heading is radically altered or confirmed, thus changing our azimuth entirely or propelling us further and faster down some road we’re already travelling.
I’m back in Phoenix this week, a city that holds an extremely significant place in my heart for the development that took place here; the wins, the losses, the breaking, and the reforming.
I don’t like it here. It’s noisy, it’s busy, people are in a hurry, gas is expensive (actually, everything is expensive), and the concrete jungle of the city is no longer a habitat this particular monkey feels at home in anymore.
It’s almost too natural for me to look at the city from a top-down perspective. Then I think to myself, how ridiculous!
And the realization dawns on me: by placing myself outside the present moment, by imagining all the reasons I don’t like something, my environment transforms into something I don’t like. So, I start over. I feel my ass cheeks in the chair I’m sitting in, the breeze coming in off the street, the subtle burning on my ribs from the tattoo I got yesterday, the aftertaste of coffee in my mouth. I think about what this city actually is for me, and I connect the dots backward.
When you’re in the military, you approach everything ego-forward. It cannot be helped. Anyone who has served in any capacity (combat or non-combat role is inconsequential) will tell you the same thing.
I’ve spent hours measuring and straightening awards on my chest plate. I carried a lighter around in my pocket to burn off stray fibers of my uniform. I polished my boots, shaved my face daily, cut my hair weekly, sat up straight, didn’t put my hands in my pockets, didn’t put my elbows on the table, kept my head on a swivel, and was incredibly aware of what other people in every single situation were observing when they looked at me.
The military doesn’t just teach you how to act; it teaches you who to be.
So I curated my image to be exactly what I thought it was supposed to be. What I was taught it was supposed to be through rigorous instruction over the course of many years. Naturally, the thoughts that informed that image changed too. And surprisingly, that worked very well for me for a long time. I was good at wearing that skin.
Then I got out of the military and that skin aged very quickly. It cracked and peeled under the fire of a different sun.
I was ultra judgmental of others and I made assumption after assumption that I understood what was going on in their heads, especially as it pertained to their view of me. I was on constant alert and even though I knew logically that I wasn’t in real physical danger, my nervous system didn’t. The predictable, structured environment provided by the military was gone and a brave new world of possibilities arose in its place.
My ego erected strategy upon strategy upon strategy to try to deal with the madness of this new world. It tried to apply what it learned over the last nine years protecting itself and to gain the upper hand in unfamiliar situations. My strategic self distanced itself from my true self. It was in the driver’s seat all of the time. And when my true self wanted to take the wheel for awhile, my strategic self made the subconscious decision that it wasn’t a good enough driver, and my relationship with alcohol morphed into one of dependence in order to avoid discomfort.
In 2021, though I didn’t realize it at the time, one of those pivotal moments happened for me. I was introduced to an organization called Merging Vets and Players. I offered my gym as a space for them to host weekly huddles for combat veterans and former athletes, both who suffer similar struggles with loss of identity, tribe, and purpose after they hang up their boots and cleats. I didn’t make this decision with my own healing in mind, but that was a miraculous byproduct of their entry into my world.
What I saw and experienced every Wednesday evening for as long as I was in Phoenix was a group of individuals come together into a container where they could put their bags down. For ninety minutes a week, the cracked skin of my ego sloughed away little by little. No judgment, no advice, no words of wisdom, no sales pitch, no nothing. Just a place for people to talk, ramble, bullshit, celebrate, cry, hug, whatever they needed. And for the first time, my strategic self began to let go a little bit. My true self felt safe enough to begin the process of FEELING again.
It sounds wild to me sometimes, that I forgot how to feel. But the more time I spend working with people, especially high-performers, the more I realize how much the modern world encourages us to spend all our time up in our heads.
We become convinced that our minds, or the voice(s) inside them, are “us.” That our thoughts arise not from our conditioning, but from some wellspring of soul-bound consciousness.
But that is not the truth. And we are under no obligation to remain attached to any thought in our heads, regardless of the importance our minds assign it.
Last night, I had the honor of visiting the Phoenix chapter of Merging Vets and Players again. And it was such a stark reminder of what that group really gave me without asking for anything in return other than for me to show up.
They gave me a container to sit in long enough for the poison in me to begin dissolving. A container for my strategic self to relinquish control to my true self, if only for a moment to begin. A container for me to start teaching myself how to feel again.
Healing isn’t something we do very well alone. It happens in the spaces that can hold who we’ve been and who we’re becoming.
The world needs more containers.
Seek one, build one, support one.
Trade strategy for self.
With gratitude and curiosity,
-Rich
365 Days of Gentle Discipline
If you’ve been enjoying these reflections, I think you’ll love what I’ve poured into 365 Days of Gentle Discipline. It’s a guided journal designed to sit beside you all year long, helping you stay consistent, revisit your goals with honesty, and notice the patterns that shape your days.
👉 Pick up your copy here, and let’s walk these next 365 days together.
P.S. You don’t need a reason to start. Explore yourself.
Thank you Brother!!! That was awesome!!!
Thank you once again, Rich, for sharing your journey. It is a beautiful one!